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Kohima, Sept. 18: Police today foiled the proposed blockade of the state secretariat by the Nagaland Contractors and Suppliers Union.
The union members were not allowed to move out of their office premises in PWD Colony by riot police, which led to near confrontation between agitators and the police.
The union is on an agitation for over a month against non-release of its pending bills amounting to Rs 35 crore. However, the government said most of the bills were bogus and it had constituted a special investigating team to probe into “pending bills”.
After a standoff for nearly an hour, Naga organisations like Naga Hoho, Naga Mothers’ Association and Naga Students’ Federation had to intervene to defuse the impasse. They have sought two days to resolve the standoff.
The Opposition Congress and BJP have demanded the government for immediate release of the pending bills.
Nagaland commissioner and secretary Temjen Toy said all those bills which have become very old would be scrutinised by the respective departments. He said the probe team would verify pending liabilities of the union at the earliest so that payments could be made against bills found genuine and requested the union to withdraw their agitation.
Pele Khezhie, president of the union, said all pending bills in the roads and bridges, housing and PHE departments amounting to Rs 35,83,68,952 have been duly verified by competent technical engineers.
“We had given enough time to the government to come forward with any clarification or verification of the pending bills but this was never done in the past two and half years,” Khezhie alleged.
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