Northeast Desk, 13th June: On June 12, Adelbert Nongrum, a legislator from the Voice of the People Party (VPP), lodged a complaint with the Meghalaya Lokayukta against ten former state government and Meghalaya Energy Corporation Limited (MeECL) officials, alleging corruption in the Saubhagya scheme’s implementation.
The complaint, based on the Comptroller and Auditor General of India’s (CAG) report on Social and Economic Sectors for the year ending March 31, 2022, accuses these officials of misappropriating public funds and granting undue financial benefits to contractors.
The individuals named in the complaint include the former chief secretary, former additional chief secretary (Power), chairman cum managing director (CMD) of MeECL, and several former officials of the MePDCL. Specific titles mentioned are the Director (Distribution), Chief Engineer (Distribution), Chief Engineer (Rural Electrification), Company Secretary, Chief Accounts Officer/Deputy Chief Accounts Officer, Additional Chief Engineer (Material Management), and Additional Chief Engineer (Planning & Design).
According to Nongrum, the CAG report highlighted irregular deletions of critical clauses from the bid documents for works under the Saubhagya household electrification programme by the Empowered Committee (Tender) of MePDCL, actions which contradicted directives from the Rural Electrification Corporation. This allegedly resulted in undue financial benefits to Turnkey Contractors, causing an avoidable expenditure of Rs 156.14 crore.
The complaint also points out that despite an advisory from the Cabinet Secretary of India to cancel the tender due to contractor rates exceeding the estimated cost, MePDCL proceeded to award contracts to Turnkey Contractors in February-March 2019. An item-wise rate comparison showed that contractor rates were significantly higher than departmental rates, leading to further unnecessary expenditure.
Nongrum filed the complaint under Section 13(1)(a) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, alleging that the public servants named either dishonestly or fraudulently misappropriated property under their control or permitted others to do so.
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