Guwahati, Jan. 20: Former Assam minister and senior state Congress leader Akon Bora was quizzed by the police today in connection with a scam involving the social welfare department, which Bora helmed in the previous Tarun Gogoi regime.
Bora was summoned to the office of the vigilance and anti-corruption bureau of Assam police here this morning and questioned for around six hours regarding the multi-crore-rupee scandal during his tenure as social welfare minister. Bora was accompanied by two advocates during the questioning.
Bora was in-charge of the department from September 2008 till January 2015 when he was dropped from the ministry. It is believed that more than Rs 2,000 crore was siphoned off.
Coming out of the bureau office, Bora denied that there was any scam in the social welfare department during his tenure. "Many good work was done by the department during our tenure. If something wrong had happened without my knowledge, then it will be revealed in the inquiry," he said.
The director of vigilance and anti-corruption bureau, Y.K. Gautam, said Bora was examined and his statement was recorded but didn't divulge what transpired during the questioning. So far, 22 persons, including some senior officials of social welfare department, have been examined by the bureau, he added.
Bora also vehemently denied allegations of his complicity in the scam, saying that mere examination by an investigating agency does not indicate that a person is guilty.
An official source said a section of social welfare department officials had been allegedly siphoning off Rs 150 crore a year from the government coffers for the past 15 years in the name of food for nine lakh children who actually do not exist. Besides, 390 fake Anganwadi centres were also fraudulently entered for siphoning off public money.
The scam was detected when the BJP-led coalition government came to power in Assam in May last year.
The source said the scandal came to light during a review of the performance of the department by chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal, who also holds the social welfare portfolio. He subsequently ordered a probe by the vigilance and anti-corruption department.
PCC president Ripun Bora could not be contacted for his reaction.
Party chief spokesperson Apurba Bhattacharjee forwarded the staple "law will take its own course" line and attributed the development, to a large extent, to the tendency of the incumbent state government to divert attention from its own failings.
"We believe the law will take its own course but at this moment it (Bora's questioning) seems to be a political conspiracy because Bora has been examined even before those who were senior officers of the department when the alleged anomalies took place. If the investigating agency is examining Bora without any evidence, it will not fulfil the purpose of the investigation," Bhattacharjee told The Telegraph.
To buttress his claim of the government trying to diverting attention from issues related to governance, he referred to the bad press the Sonowal government was getting because of the delay in throwing open the second Saraighat bridge and yesterday's public humiliation of a panchayat and rural development engineer by ruling BJP MLA Guneswar Das at Raha in Nagaon district.
Bora, 65, a former Congress MLA from Dispur, has remained in the news for the best part of his tenure as social welfare and jails minister, most notably for his alleged role in the 2009 Jogdol mass murder case and his fallout with his one-time closest aide Dulal Bora, who later became a bitter foe and his vocal critic.
Though close to former chief minister Tarun Gogoi, he was dropped in the last reshuffle Gogoi undertook to refurbish his government's image in 2015 in the run-up to the Assembly polls which the ruling Congress lost to the BJP and its allies.
