The opposition Congress has termed the decision of the State government to set up an independent inquiry into the various scams and anomalies in Meghalaya Energy Corporation Limited (MeECL) as an “eye wash”.
As per the government notification issued on June 30, retired Judge of Allahabad High Court, Justice Ifaqat Ali Khan will head the independent inquiry committee into the MeECL affairs while retired IAS officer Manoj Kumar will be the administrative member. Retired executive director of Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) Sunil Kumar is the technical member of the inquiry committee.
“The inquiry committee is only an eye wash. The technical member in the three-member committee is retired executive director of REC and he has a good connection with the company called Satnam Global Infra Ltd, the one which was awarded with the Saubhagya project and many other schemes. How can this inquiry committee be independent when they know each other have good connections?” senior Congress legislator Zenith Sangma said today.
“Therefore, without any reasonable doubt we can foresee that the report of the Inquiry can be biased,” Zenith added.
He also said that Congress wanted the investigation to be carried out by the CBI.
“The Chief Minister will never hand it over to CBI because everything is done under his patronage,” Zenith alleged.
According to the Congress, there was a need for the removal of Power Minister James Sangma in order to ensure that the inquiry was not undermined.
“From day one, James Sangma being minister in charge and having the supreme executive power in the Power Department has interfered and dictated. Starting from appointing junior officers as MeECL CMD, keeping many of the key posts vacant for long so that same single person can occupy two or three posts and when any of them did not comply with his (their) needs, transferring the officer within short period and bringing in someone whom they can get things done under pressure,” Zenith said.
He also said that the MeECL Board of Directors presently did not have full strength and till now there was no representative from Planning and Finance departments.
“The former MeECL CMD is still Director (Finance) in the Board of Directors. One woman independent director has resigned from the board for open interference and forcing the board to work on controversial issues involving corruption,” Zenith said.
