The Arunachal Pradesh government was delaying prosecution sanction against 36 accused, which includes ministers, IAS officers, five sitting legislators of the ruling party and FCI officers in `1,000-crore PDS scam.
Disclosing that the state government has also moved a proposal to remove the head of the special investigation cell Mayank Chauhan, IPS, appointed by the Gauhati high court to probe the scam, the state government sources told this newspaper that instead of granting prosecution sanction and cooperating in the investigation, the Arunachal government tried to facilitate the release of `56 crores to the contractors last month by submitting a false affidavit in the top court. However, the Supreme Court has put a stay on releasing the money to the PDS contractors. The PDS scam relates to loss suffered by the public exchequer because of false and fraudulent hill transport subsidy bills, which were cleared without financial concurrence.
The SIC, which submitted the chargesheet against 56 persons before the court of special judge-cum-district session judge, North Lakhimpur, with limited prosecution sanction, has already chargesheeted former chief minister Gegong Apang into the multi-crore rupees scam, which rocked the frontier state. Mr Apang was arrested by the SIC in 2010 for not cooperating in the investigation.
Among others who are sought to be chargesheeted by the SIC into the scam includes brother of Congress MP Sanjay Takam, former BJP MLA from Assam Kartik Sen Sinha and senior officers of the Food Corporation of India who are alleged to have colluded in raising false bills and siphoning off over `1,000 crores with PDS contractors in Arunachal Pradesh.
The Gauhati high court, which had formed the SIC in 2004 and monitoring the investigation into the multi-crore rupees PDS scam, in its last order directed the state government to grant the prosecution sanctions against all the accused within a year time. However, it is almost a year, and the request is pending before the government.