Relief for the resourceful

At least the most egregious misuse of relief material must be probed and the guilty punished.

As a commander of the People’s Liberation Army during the civil war, Janardan Sharma was a firm believer in the might of the gun. If you could not get power the legitimate way, you tried to snatch it away. Seventeen years since the Maoist guns fell silent, Sharma has not forgotten his old, forceful ways. In the new parliamentary setup the Maoists joined following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2006, Sharma quickly perfected the art of wrestling the marshals in the parliament. During his infamous tenure as finance minister, he tried to dictate the contents of the annual budget by smuggling his own set of experts on the economy into the finance ministry. His post-2006 shenanigans are a legion. But perhaps we are getting to see the worst side of him in the aftermath of the November 3 Jajarkot earthquake. The Maoist parliamentarian from Rukum West constituency has shamelessly tried to divert vital aid going to quake-affected regions into his electoral constituency. As a result, hundreds of families in most affected regions of Jajarkot have had to spend nights under the open skies, and at least four have died from bitter cold.