Staff Reporter
ITANAGAR, 22 Oct: Reacting to the corruption charges levelled against Chief Minister Pema Khandu and his father, former chief minister late Dorjee Khandu, by the Arunachal Against Corruption (AAC), the state BJP on Saturday termed the allegations “distorted.”
Addressing journalists at the press club here, the chief minister’s adviser Tai Tagak said that “the AAC has distorted the facts issued by the BJP in 2011 on corruption charges practiced by the Congress, which was also taken up in the national budget session that year to involve the Central Bureau of Investigation in the case.”
Tagak, who was the state BJP president in 2011, said that the state BJP had formed a “fact-finding committee from 2010 to 2011 against the corruption practiced by the Congress government, and had released a book titled ‘Northeast Loot’ on 18 January, 2011.”
“The ones submitted in 2011 have been maliciously distorted by the AAC with the 2014 BJP election, wherein a few parts enclosed in the book, ‘Northeast Loot’, including a few pointers on the hydropower, was also distorted,” Tagak said.
He said that, in 2011, Pema Khandu was not a legislator, although his father was the chief minister.
“The Pema Khandu-led BJP government in the state is intolerant towards corruption and already a lokayukta committee has been set up with Prasanta Kumar Saikia as judge and Yeshi Tsering as lokayukta member. The government is serious on corruption, and if anybody finds a hint of corruption, they can approach the state lokayukta to deal with the matter in a comprehensive manner,” said Tagak.
Speaking about the documents the AAC says are in its possession, Tagak maintained that “all the documental work has been done in an engineered and malicious intent.”
He said that “the chief minister’s office is an institution comprising bureaucracy and other sectors. One should not mix up individual and institutional corruption.”
The state BJP also sought a clarification from the AAC, stating that the AAC should “withdraw the documental allegations” if it is unable to provide a clarification.
On 17 July, 2017, Pema Khandu occupied the CM’s seat for the first time from the Congress party, and, within five months, shifted to two other parties: the People’s Party of Arunachal, and then the BJP.
