Assembly Speaker Metbah Lyngdoh today said that the Assembly secretariat has nothing to do with subcontracting the work for construction of the new Assembly building at Mawdiangdiang to a disqualified contractor Badri Rai & Company.
“You please talk to the government and to the PWD. It is not the concern of the Assembly secretariat,” Lyngdoh told media persons here today.
On the controversy over the third-party audit carried out by IIT-Guwahati regarding the structure of the new Assembly building, Lyngdoh said that the decision to entrust IIT-Guwahati for the audit was also not taken by him or the Assembly secretariat.
“The Assembly Secretariat has no role to play in this,” he said.
Lyngdoh also said that he has no knowledge about the connection between IIT-Guwahati and Badri Rai & Company.
The statement by the Speaker is significant as the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) has squarely blamed the NPP-led MDA government for subcontracting the work to disqualified contractor Badri Rai & Company and also for choosing IIT-Guwahati to carry out third-party audit of the building.
It may be mentioned that AITC spokesman Saket Gokhale had on September 30 said that after the collapse of the dome of the Assembly building in May this year, the State government chose IIT-Guwahati for conducting third-party audit of the building instead of IIT-Roorkee which had approved the original design.
Gokhale also said IIT-Guwahati had links with Badri Rai & Company since the contract for construction of 160 units of F-type residential quarters for IIT-Guwahati at the cost of Rs 136.86 crore was given to Uttar Pradesh Rajkiya Nirman Nigam Ltd which subcontracted the work to Badri Rai & Co.
Further, he said that in a clear conflict of interest, IIT-Guwahati, which has itself already allotted Rs 136.86 crore worth of contract to Uttar Pradesh Rajkiya Nirman Nigam Ltd and Badri Rai & Co, was asked to audit the Assembly dome collapse where it is clear that they would go easy on the two contractors who they themselves were working with.
According to him, it is clear that the Meghalaya government appointed IIT-Guwahati to probe the Assembly dome collapse purely to shield the contractors Uttar Pradesh Rajkiya Nirman Nigam Ltd and Badri Rai & Co and to bury the incident quietly without taking any serious action against the two contractors.
“The fact that IIT-Guwahati was told to audit the dome collapse and not IIT-Roorkee shows clearly that the MDA government illegally connived with the contractors and tried to bury the matter by not disqualifying/blacklisting the contractor and also by not even imposing a penalty,” Gokhale had alleged.
Gokhale had also demanded for an independent court-monitored enquiry to probe into the “shocking acts of collusion and connivance between the MDA government and the two contractors who have been allowed to violate all norms and who have been protected by the government despite their failures”.
