NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday decided to conduct an in-depth inquiry into allegations of Arunachal govt’s contract largesse to firms owned by chief minister Pema Khandu’s relatives and asked the state to provide details of such contracts for the last five years.
Appearing for petitioner NGO ‘Save Mon Region Federation‘, advocate Prashant Bhushan said numerous contracts worth hundreds of crores of rupees have been awarded to the firms owned by CM’s relatives in complete violation of norms of the Union government and that comptroller and auditor general had not carried out a proper auditing of the award of contracts in alleged breach of the rules and regulations.
A bench of CJI Sanjiv Khanna, and Justices Sanjay Kumar and K V Viswanathan asked the state government to file an affidavit in five weeks giving details of the contracts awarded to the firms owned by the CM’s relatives as alleged in the petition.
It also asked the Union ministries of home affairs and finance to file detailed affidavits regarding the norms governing the award of contracts to relatives of MPs, MLAs and ministers. It also asked the CAG to give a detailed report on these contracts, which was ordered to be audited by the SC in its Mar 20, 2024, order.
The SC on Mar 20 last year had disposed of a 2010 petition filed by another NGO ‘Voluntary Arunachal Sena’, which was represented by Bhushan, seeking CBI probe into allegations of corruption against Khandu’s relatives. The NGO had alleged that Pema Khandu’s father’s second wife Rinchin Drema’s firm Brand Eagles had been awarded many government contracts despite flouting rules for award of contracts.
Appearing for Arunachal govt, senior advocate Rajiv Dutta said being a border state, the situation is very different from the rest of the country and that repeatedly similar petitions are filed with a political motive to defame the govt. He said there are 28 districts in the state but the complaints of the present petitioner pertained to only one district and alleged that these petitions intend to impede development of the state.
