SHILLONG, June 27: The Meghalaya Energy Corporation Limited (MeECL) which has been marred by a series of allegations of corruption, mismanagement and misutilisation of central schemes, is set to undergo an overhaul with the state government announcing restructuring of its board and those of its subsidiary companies.
Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma said the posts of chairman and managing director of MeECL would be segregated. This was decided in the Cabinet meeting on Monday.
The MeECL will now have a full-time managing director who can be from the IAS cadre, a lateral entrant or a technocrat selected through a transparent process.
The MD of MeECL will also be the MD of the three subsidiaries – Meghalaya Power Generation Corporation Limited, Meghalaya Power Distribution Corporation Limited and Meghalaya Power Transmission Corporation Limited.
The power minister will be the non-executive chairman of the MeECL while the chairman of the three subsidiaries will be the chief secretary, additional chief secretary or the principal secretary in charge of power, the chief minister said.
“The decision was taken since MeECL has so far been managed by state government officials with other responsibilities and hence not able to focus on running the corporation as needed,” he said.
He said the government may prefer to get an experienced technocrat who would understand technical matters of the MeECL. “We want the overall functioning of the MeECL to improve,” he said.
The MeECL has been in the news for more than two years now over allegations of rampant corruption and illegalities, leading to the ouster of then Power minister James PK Sangma from the department. Deputy Chief Minister Prestone Tynsong now holds this portfolio.
The then Chairman-cum-Managing Director Arun Kumar Kembhavi was removed from his position and the then Additional Chief Secretary RV Suchiang was appointed as his successor.
Suchiang, who was appointed as chief secretary, was succeeded by Additional Chief Secretary Donald P Wahlang as CMD of MeECL.
While power outages continue and power-generating companies have kept on serving notices to the government to clear pending dues worth crores of rupees, the corporation’s management has been accused of gross mismanagement.
The MeECL is also under the scanner over the alleged Saubhagya scam. An internal and preliminary report of the CAG had revealed financial bungling of over Rs 149 crore in the implementation of Saubhagya, which is a flagship programme of the Centre.
After this report was first carried by The Shillong Times, the then Health Minister, AL Hek had said there cannot be “smoke without fire”.
The smart meter initiative is also under scrutiny. Amidst the rising charges of wrongdoing, the state government appointed Justice (retd) RN Mishra of the Allahabad High Court on July 29, 2021 to head the probe into alleged corruption in the MeECL.
The inquiry report was submitted to the chief minister on March 29 this year but the report is yet to be made public.
