TMC wants court-monitored probe into dome’s collapse

SHILLONG, Sep 30: The Trinamool Congress on Friday demanded a court-monitored independent probe into the incident of Assembly building dome collapse after alleging illegal connivance among the NPP-led MDA Government, the contractors and the auditor.
Party’s national spokesperson Saket Gokhale said new facts, which emerged, showed a clear attempt by the government to bury the entire issue quietly.
He said the IIT-Roorkee – the original approver of the building’s design – was not called in for auditing after the dome had collapsed.
Talking about the reason why the government chose the IIT-Guwahati for the audit, Gokhale said, “IIT-Guwahati currently has a 136.86 crore construction contract which is being executed by UPRNNL and Badri Rai & Co – the two companies which were working at the new Assembly building.”
Stating that the IIT-Guwahati stated in its report that the dome had collapsed due to lack of coordination between the designers and the contractors, the Trinamool leader said, “Despite the report, the MDA government did not take any action against the official contractor, Uttar Pradesh Rajkiya Nirman Nigam Ltd, which is responsible for the dome’s collapse and for illegally subcontracting work to the disqualified company Badri Rai & Co.”
He said the government instead decided to allow the same contractors to fix the collapsed structure at no extra cost.
“It can be deduced that the GoM appointed IIT-Guwahati instead of IIT – Roorkee to probe the Assembly dome collapse purely to shield the contractors UPRNNL and Badri Rai & Co and to bury the incident quietly without taking any serious action against the two contractors,” Gokhale said.
Stating that the Meghalaya unit of the Trinamool is appalled at the “illegal connivance” between the MDA government and the contractors, he demanded a fresh audit on the dome’s collapse either by the IIT-Roorkee or any independent agency. Further, he demanded that UPRNNL and Badri Rai & Co are immediately blacklisted and penalized, a fresh tender for further construction is floated and an “independent court-monitored probe” against the MDA government and the two contractors ordered.
The Trinamool’s state unit said the dome’s collapse was yet another instance of the government’s failure. It is utterly shocking that time and again, the MDA government is not only failing the people of Meghalaya but also squandering tax-payers’ money, the party said.
It said when Gokhale challenged the government for an open debate in front of the media on these issues of alleged corruption and misgovernance, Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma, Deputy CM Prestone Tynsong and others made all kinds of “frivolous excuses” to avoid the debate as they feared getting exposed.
“These new facts (as well as past revelations on various issues) show that there is entrenched corruption in the MDA government along with an unholy nexus with favoured contractors which has drained the public exchequer of crores of rupees,” the party said insisting “the MDA government must agree to an open debate with the TMC if it is sincere and has its hands clean.”
“But, we know that they will continue to dodge and avoid this challenge because of the millions of skeletons of corruption that exist in their closet,” the TMC further said.