Teacher-turned-politician Donkupar Roy, the new chief minister of Meghalaya, today said weeding out corruption would be the top priority of the Meghalaya Progressive Alliance (MPA) government.

Being a doctorate in economics, Roy knows that a rupee saved is a rupee earned and Meghalaya is in need of as much money it can save or earn to get on to the development highway as soon as possible.

He also claims that the fate that befell the Congress-led government that lacked transparency had a lot to do with its business transactions. “Our priority is to provide a clean administration free of corruption in the next five years,” Roy told The Telegraph in the Assembly here this morning.

The Lapang government was accused of corruption because of lack of transparency and accountability.

The signing of power project deals with private companies and the controversial uranium mining plan are likely to be kept in abeyance by the new government.

Almost all the constituent partners of the MPA were against handing over the power projects to private companies and are opposed to uranium mining, Roy said.

Asked whether the new government would abort the power deals, Roy said: “We will first study the findings of the committee set up to look into the merits and demerits of the deals.”

The new government will also have to tackle issues like the border dispute with Assam and implementation of the three-tier card system to check influx.

The coalition partners will hold meetings to study the manifestos and chalk out a “common minimum programme (CMP)”. The previous government did not have a CMP, he pointed out.

A core committee of all the constituent parties had been formed for an early formulation of the CMP, the chief minister said.