A political war has erupted between the BJP and the Congress over allegations that Union Minister Kiren Rijiju tried to favour a tainted contractor engaged in constructing a hydropower project in Arunachal Pradesh. While the Congress has demanded the Minister’s resignation and released an audio tape to prove his brother’s complicity, the Government and the BJP have stood by the Minister, who has trashed the charges saying he only tried to help the local people. The Union Power Ministry issued a statement and made public the copy of the letter sent by Rijiju to clear the air.
Reports claimed that Rijiju, his cousin and a contractor in Arunachal Pradesh Goboi Rijiju, and several top officials of the State-run North Eastern Electric Power Corporation (NEEPCO), including its Chairman and Managing Director, have been named in a 129-page report by the PSU’s Chief Vigilance Officer Satish Verma that alleges corruption in construction of two dams for 600 MW Kameng Hydro Electric Project, one of the biggest hydro-electric projects in Arunachal Pradesh.
Alleging that it was a Rs 450-crore scam in the form of false and inflated transportation bills, Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala released an audio tape of a purported conversation of the Minister’s cousin, a contractor in the 600 MW project,
and Rijiju’s letter, recommending that held-up payments be released.
Refuting the charges, the Minister said, “Those who planted the story will be beaten up with shoes when they will come to our area.” He also shared on Twitter the copies of the representation he received and the letter he had sent to the Power Minister.
“Really cheap!... Is it a corruption helping poor TribalsIJ,” he tweeted. Stating that the contracts were given and most of the payments made during the Congress rule, he asked the Opposition party to apologise.
“I pity Congress party ... I feel that Congress should apologise to the nation for creating an issue which is non-existent. If local people have approached me to tell me that bills are pending and the bills are of small amount and what they are saying of Rs 150 crore, it is not like that,” added Rijiju.
“Small bills, pending since 2012, 2013 and 2014 before we came to power, the contracts were awarded when we were not in the Government, the payments were paid when we were not in the Government. Only I was told that some 20-30 per cent of payments were remaining which NEEPCO is not releasing the money. So I wrote a letter to the Power Minister that just look into the matter, that’s it,” the Minister said.
However, Surjewala said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “tall claims” of bringing transparency have “fallen flat” as had happened with several other scandals in the past, including Vyapam, lalitgate and the Vijay Mallya issue. “Kiren Rijiju has no right to stay in office. He should either be dismissed by the Prime Minister or asked to resign till an independent probe is complete,” he added.
The report of Chief Vigilance Officer Satish Verma, a Gujarat cadre IPS officer, was sent to the CBI, CVC and the Ministry of Power in July this year. It alleges an “elaborate conspiracy” involving contractors, NEEPCO officials and the West Kameng district administration to defraud the NEEPCO and the government of funds that “may extend up to Rs 450 crore”. West Kameng, the site of the project, falls in Arunachal West which is the parliamentary constituency of Rijiju. The CBI has made two “surprise checks” but no FIR has been registered yet, reports said.
Verma was pulled up by NEEPCO for “unauthorised absence” and transferred to the CRPF in Tripura soon after his report. Verma was also part of the three-member SIT set up to probe the alleged fake encounter of Ishrat Jahan in Gujarat in 2004 when Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister. Verma had said Ishrat’s killing was a “premeditated murder”.
Surjewala said, “This is a very serious issue. The Prime Minister should speak out on this issue. If the PM has courage of conviction, he must either sack Rijiju or ask him to resign and conduct a fair and free probe so that truth comes out...Till then, Rijiju should be divested of his post.”
Targeting the CBI, the Congress alleged that the premier investigation agency has become a “puppet” in the hands of the Modi Government and has not even registered an FIR in the matter despite the report by the vigilance officer.
BJP national secretary Shrikant Sharma insisted that the contractor, who is at the centre of allegations, is not Rijiju’s cousin as alleged. “It is a completely baseless charge. The Congress and its friends have hatched a conspiracy to target the BJP as they have not been able to find a single case of corruption against our Government.
AAP leader Ashish Khetan said the Minister of State for Home Affairs not only wrote a letter to Power Minister Piyush Goyal to release funds of contractors in State-run NEEPCO project, but also “hid the fact that his brother was a sub-contractor in it”.
Meanwhile, springing to the defence of Rijiju, the Power Ministry said payments to a contractor of power plant in Arunachal Pradesh were released even before the Minister forwarded a representation for the same. Dubbing allegation against Rijiju using his influence to clear bills as “unsubstantiated, false and baseless”, the Ministry said the Vigilance Officer, who alleged the corruption, had himself authorised release of substantial payments to the contractor.
The Ministry in a statement said Rijiju had on November 9 last year forwarded a representation of local inhabitants of his constituency, complaining about the stoppage of payments to the sub-contractor of Patel Engineering ltd for transportation of boulders/sand.
“At no point did Shri Rijiju recommend that payment be released but only requested that ‘kindly get this petition considered in your Ministry sympathetically on priority’,” it said making public the copy of the letter.
But as much as 60 per cent of the payment due to PEl was released on November 4, 2015, on instruction of Verma, much before the letter of Rijiju. “Hence, the letter written by Hon’ble MoS Home Affairs has no bearing on any payments released by NEEPCO as the payment had already been released before his letter under authorisation of Shri Verma,” the statement said.
“No instructions or directions by the Government were given to NEEPCO at any time for making any payments. Thus, the allegations made are baseless, totally false and seem to be motivated by the charge-sheet issued against an officer for violation of CVC instructions and service conduct rules,” it said.