SHILLONG: A day after the High Court of Meghalaya allowed CBI to prosecute Ampareen Lyngdoh and 21 others including eight MUDA officials for granting permission to 13 persons to construct ‘illegal’ high-rise buildings in the state, several political parties and pressure groups have demanded resignation of the Urban Affairs Minister.
Opposition UDP on Friday asserted that it is no longer tenable for Lyngdoh to continue as a minister.
The party general secretary Allan Dkhar said “The onus lies with the Chief Minister whether he will ask her to step down or drop her from the Cabinet”.
The NPP state president WR Kharlukhi said that if the Court finds her guilty, she will have to face the consequences.
The CSWO president Agnes Kharshiing said that the Urban Minister should resign on moral grounds as she has been named in the CBI report.
“Government should not allow and give her indulgence as this portrays the state as very corrupt, allowing scams and corrupt practice to be brushed aside,” Kharshiing said in a statement on Friday.
In the education scam, hundreds of genuine candidates were affected, where marks were tampered on the minister’s behest in her house, yet no arrest was made by police even with three to four FIR’s filed in this regard from 2010″, Kharshiing said.
The organization expected the law to be upheld equally and that Ampareen be immediately removed both from the office as Minister Urban Affairs and as the Chairperson of the MUDA till the court gives her a clean chit.
Disposing of a petition filed by four advocates, the HC on Thursday granted liberty to CBI to register the case at its headquarters in Delhi and to seek liberty from the Supreme Court, if so advised, to prosecute the accused in a Delhi court so that the trial could reach the logical conclusion within time and to the satisfaction of the litigants.
While passing the order, the Chief Justice Uma Nath Singh said that the CBI in a detailed preliminary enquiry has found inculpatory materials against Ampareen Lyngdoh, Chairperson of Meghalaya Urban Development Authority ( MUDA), and MUDA members F. War, T. Lyngwa, BRM Lyngdoh, K. Wahlang, BPF Lyngdoh, S Shullai, and R Rymbai, and LK Jyrwa “for granting permission for raising illegal construction of high rise buildings beyond ground floor plus three (G+3)” .
