Staff Reporter
ITANAGAR, 22 Aug: Accusing the Itanagar Municipal Corporation (IMC) of indulging in “major corrupt practice by flouting the tender guidelines,” the Arunachal Jankalyan Sangathan (AJS) on Monday took out a peaceful rally in protest against “endemic corruption and gross anomalies under the IMC.”
A sizeable number of volunteers marched from Akashdeep to the tennis court here, sloganeering against the IMC mayor, deputy mayor, and officials.
The AJS sought resignation of Mayor Tame Phassang and Deputy Mayor Biri Bassang from their posts, accusing them of being involved in “corruption and inefficient governance.”
Phassang has already denied allegation of any wrongdoing.
The AJS claimed that all the works are being awarded without floating notice inviting tenders (NIT), and are being executed “at their whims and fancies, thus violating the CPWD manual and the General Financial Rules.
“All works are being executed without NIT. They are executing at their whims, thus violating NIT rules. We have been writing letters about this issue to the authorities. We are being threatened to silence our voice,” claimed AJS chairman Nabam Tama.
Tama further claimed that the works are being executed with low quality and substandard materials.
Accusing the chief information commissioner (CIC) of RTI of “colluding with the corrupt system,” he said that “the delaying tactics of the CIC in furnishing documents is very discouraging.”
The organisation also demanded job termination of IMC officials involved in the alleged corruption. It accused the IMC of “indulging in offline bidding on all the central sponsored schemes to manipulate the bidding, thereby violating the CPWD and the General Financial Rules.”
The AJS also demanded a high-level inquiry into the alleged corruption.
