Accused of money laundering, ex-Jharkhand CM Madhu Koda’s rapid ascent in politics has been matched by an equally meteoric rise in his assets. ‘If money is not there, I will not be allowed to stay on this (CM’s) chair for a day’, he had once said

For a former labour contractor with humble beginnings, ex-Jharkhand chief minister Madhu Koda has come a long way, at least when it comes to his bank balance. In the aftermath of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) lodging an FIR against him under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, and Income Tax investigators continuing to conduct raids on his and his associates’ premises across the country for the second day on Sunday, “a man of modest means” is a term few would associate with the 41-year-old Independent Member of Parliament.

“He is a millionaire,” claims Durga Oraon, who filed a PIL at the Jharkhand High Court seeking a CBI probe into the meteoric rise in Koda’s assets from less than Rs 35 lakh in 2004 to over Rs 30 crore in 2009. “I think he flourished by misusing his authority as chief minister,” claims Oraon.

What is indisputable is that Koda has come a long way from his early years in the nondescript village of Patahatu, located near the iron ore mines of Gua. His father, Rasika, was a fourth-grade employee of IISCO, a private mining company (now a SAIL subsidiary), and could afford to give his son, the eldest of three brothers, only a humble school education at Gua Madhya Vidyalaya.

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