SHILLONG, June 14: Almost a month after Chief Minister Conrad Sangma announced that the state government would institute a probe into allegations of gross irregularities in the MeECL, the government is yet to finalise a name to head the promised probe.
Speaking about the probe, the chief minister on Monday said that the government was waiting for the Political Department and the Chief Secretary to finalise the names of the persons who would head the probe.
It may be recalled that on May 17, the chief minister had announced the government’s intention to constitute a probe and had asserted that the names would be finalised within a week.
Justifying the delay, Sangma said that the government wants to ensure complete independence for the inquiry and hence the government was looking at diverse names to be enlisted in the panel. He added that the Political Department and the Chief Secretary were on the job.
“The challenge is to get diverse names so that the inquiry will be independent in the true sense,” he said.
The three-member inquiry panel will be headed by a retired judge and will have a retired administrative official and a person with technical knowhow as members.
The terms of reference of the inquiry panel will include assessment of different kind of tenders issued by the MeECL, for both central as well as state schemes.
The panel will also look into different kinds of manpower issues like appointments and other irregularities within the human resources. It will also look into allegations of power theft as well as the overall AT&C losses. The inquiry panel will get a time frame of 4-6 months to submit its report to the government.
