From Our Correspondent
TURA, July 18: Residents of plain belt areas in Garo Hills have written to the Chief Secretary, demanding the disbanding of the Anti Corruption Foundation of India (ACFI), whose officially recognised state body members, they claimed, cannot be traced but that so called anti-corruption agents appointed under individual names, by the organisation’s headquarters based outside the state, were merely taking advantage of their position to exploit and extort from different stakeholders.
The residents claim that so-called leaders for posts like state president, state secretary and chief executive officer have been appointed for Rajabala area, by the ACFI based in Haryana and that all these individuals are engaged in corruption by first filing complaints and issuing threats of exposure against various officials, only to withdraw their complaints in exchange for huge bribes paid to them.
The complaint filed by the residents comes in the wake of one such leader — Abdur Rup Choudhary — withdrawing his complaint over the alleged illegal appointment of teachers at the Rajabala Higher Secondary School on Wednesday. Choudhary supposedly held the post of Meghalaya state president in the ACFI.
Earlier, Choudhary had filed a complaint to the DSEL alleging the illegal appointment of two teachers at the Rajabala Higher Secondary School by the President and Secretary of the SMC. Surprisingly, a few days after he filed the complaint, Choudhary issued a clarification on Wednesday terming the complaint (which he himself filed) as false, baseless and concocted. He even went to the extent of stating that it was the work of some vested interests.
Interestingly, even as Choudhary withdrew his complaint on Wednesday, parents of the school along with the general public dispatched a complaint to the DSEL over the same illegal activities taking place at the school. Prior to this, two members of the SMC at the same school came forward to reveal the irregularities, while locally based AMMSU also raised the issue.
Thursday’s complaint by the residents claims that an amount of at least Rs 5 lakh has been paid to Choudhary, as learnt from reliable sources, to retract his complaint. The complaint by the residents was also signed by Sariyah Hoque and Mozidur Rahman, ACFI Meghalaya state chairman and district coordinator respectively, both of whom have resigned.
The joint complaint by the residents and the former ACFI members demanded action against Choudhary and the complete disbanding of the Meghalaya State unit of the ACFI.