RTI activist Bhaben Handique on Sunday demanded that Assam finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma be brought under the ambit of the CBI investigation into the Louis Berger bribery scam.
Handique, who has been very vocal against the scam, had filed a public interest litigation (PIL), which led to Gauhati High Court ordering a CBI probe into the case in September last year.
“Sarma has not been interrogated by the CBI yet due to interference by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah. The CBI is under political pressure not to probe Sarma’s role in the scam,” Handique, convener of Swaraj Asom, an NGO, claimed.
He said at a time when the CBI has stepped up its investigation into the case, the inquiry will remain incomplete if it does not probe the alleged role of Sarma, who was the Guwahati development department minister during the scam period.
“When the CBI has questioned almost all government officials whose names had cropped up in the scam, why is it yet to summon Sarma for questioning?” he asked.
Sarma, who is an “influential” minister in the Sarbananda Sonowal government, is also the convener of the North East Democratic Alliance, a BJP-led platform of non-Congress parties in the Northeast.
Before Sarma switched over to the BJP in August 2015, the BJP had brought out a booklet titled “Reality and Saga of Scams in Congress-ruled States — Water Supply Scam in Goa and Guwahati”, and alleged that Sarma had emerged as the key suspect in the scam.
The Congress had accused the BJP-led government of absolving Sarma of the charges after he joined the BJP.
Even former chief minister Tarun Gogoi had demanded an investigation into Sarma’s alleged role in the scam.
Bhaben Handique Agencies
Sarma, however, had denied any role in the scam and maintained there was no mention about involvement of any minister from Assam in the bribery case in the chargesheet filed in a US court. Sarma has maintained that there is no case against him since all files were cleared by Gogoi.
In the past few days, a CBI team from Delhi interrogated several former and present officials of Guwahati Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) and Guwahati development department, including former GMDA chief executive officer Preetom Saikia and former officer on special duty in the department, Pomi Baruah, in connection with the scam.
The scam came to light in July 2015 when Louis Berger International Inc, a New Jersey-based construction management company, told a US court that it had bribed government officials in India to win the contract for project management consultancy in a water supply project in Guwahati. The US court documents revealed that the firm and several consortium partners paid bribes of $9,76,639 for two water development projects in Goa and Guwahati.
Though the earlier Tarun Gogoi government had ordered a CID probe, the high court ordered a CBI inquiry observing the CID had not investigated the case in right earnest and has been conducting it in a partisan manner.
The court said since the CID is under the state government and high-ranking government officials were involved in awarding the contracts after allegedly taking huge bribes, the CID is not in a position to act independently to bring the investigation to a logical conclusion.
At least seven important files of the water supply project had gone missing from the GMDA office in 2011 and they are yet to be recovered.
