New Delhi: Opposition parties in Assam have come down heavily on chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, expressing serious concern at anomalies pointed out by a joint investigative report by The Wire and The Crosscurrent in the government’s tendering process.
The report had highlighted how work orders were granted to a businessman with close links to the chief minister’s family. The tendering process was run by the PWD ministry – which comes under Himanta Biswa Sarma himself. The company which was given the work order also has connections to Kolkata-based companies with barely any semblance of an office investing in the Sarma family’s businesses. In an RTI reply, it was proved that the PWD issued the tender to carry out work for the inaugural of a flyover in Guwahati by the chief minister five months after the event took place.
Hours after the report was published on April 2, as many as four opposition parties – the Congress, Aam Aadmi Party, Raijor Dal and Assam Jatiya Parishad – demanded a high-level probe into the matter.
Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) president Bhupen Borah told reporters in Guwahati, “We have heard about Ram being born after the Ramayana was written and now people of Assam have got a new experience of learning that a government work was done first and the tendering process happened after it. Thanks to the chief minister, people are getting to get such new experiences every now and then.” Calling the chief minister “synonymous with corruption,” the Congress leader said, “Just the other day, Sarma had said that he would keep a watch on Congress till he is alive. Today, I want to tell him that till he is alive, corruption will not leave him.”
CM @himantabiswa is synonymous with corruption. This is a new experience for people of Assam & we’ll see more of these unprecedented cases in future as long as he is CM.
– @BhupenKBorah, APCC President#DispurFlyoverCorruption pic.twitter.com/XQoxf26VU8— Assam Congress (@INCAssam) April 2, 2023
Holding a press conference in Guwahati, Congress spokesperson Manjit Mahanta questioned why the Sarma government issued a tender to invite bids for the inaugural of a two-lane flyover in the city five months after the event had taken place. “We demand a high-level inquiry into it,” Mahanta said.
Several national leaders of the Congress also reacted to the report on social media
AJP spokesperson Ziaur Rahman, in a separate press meet, said, “Only an independent probe by a sitting high court judge can find the truth and that is our demand.” He called the RTI-based information published in the news report “shocking”.
Challenging the Enforcement Directorate to initiate a probe into the matter if “they have courage”, Raijor Dal vice president Rasel Hussain said, ‘The PWD is under the chief minister. We don’t want anybody to point fingers at our chief minister. But if such big allegations are levelled at his department and family members, what hope do we have?” He called for “an independent investigation into these allegations”.
State AAP leaders told local media, “The ruling dispensation, by misusing agencies like ED and CBI, are increasingly putting opposition leaders in jail. If this allegation is true, why not put those from the ruling party in jail? We demand a high level probe into the matter. Just like Gautam Adani’s business is actually Narendra Modi’s, Bhaskar Sarma’s business is also that of the chief minister and his family’s. The chief minister keeps challenging Arvind Kejriwal; he doesn’t like being called corrupt; so let him come clean on this flyover scam.”
While the state BJP and the chief minister is silent on the matter, a PTI report said, “Repeated attempts to get a response from the chief minister’s office did not yield any result.”
On April 3 though, the chief minister reacted to a comment on Sarma’s wife running a school in the state by Kejriwal, who visited Guwahati on April 2. At a rally, Kejriwal said education in a state can’t be good when the chief minister’s wife runs a high end school. Sarma told local media, “Why should I react to what my wife does. It is not my job.”