CLP praises draft NRC, frowns upon corruption

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, Jan 4: Leader of Opposition in Assam Assembly Debabrata Saikia has said that the publication of part NRC draft has been successful and peaceful. He, however, has expressed his dismay over ‘the long arm of the law falling short of reaching corrupts’ who continue to go scot free.

Talking to newsmen in Guwahati on Thursday, Saikia said: “The publication of the part draft of NRC has been successful and peaceful. Despite the government panicking people with parading army in the State, the people of the State accepted the draft with smiling faces. I take this opportunity to congratulate all those present at the May 5, 2005 tripartite talks – then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, then State Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi and then leaders of the AASU – for scripting the fate of NRC.”

Saikia, however, disapproved of the BJP-led government’s performance in fighting corruption. “The Chief Minister’s drive against corruption has failed. The current investigation into the cash-for-job scam in the APSC is a follow-up of the case filed by Ahkil Gogoi in 2013. However, the case regarding a doctor in Dibrugarh paying bribes to an engineer for selection by the APSC has not been probed as yet. There’re also allegations of anomalies in the APSC selection process in 2016, but that are yet to be investigated. This is not all. Corruption reeks of in the purchase of tractors distributed among farmers of the State on December 10 2017. We want an inquiry by the CBI or a judge of the Gauhati High Court into the scam.”    

Saikia said that none of the scams in the Irrigation Department in the State was probed in the past two years. “Not a single irrigation project has been approved by the department in the last two years. Even funds for maintence of the ongoing irrigation projects haven’t been released. For maintence of the projects the department seeks funds from MLAs from their local area development funds. The implementation of Prime Minister’s Irrigation Scheme has been dismal in Assam,” he said.

Other areas which Saikia found Dispur falling short of doing enough are crop insurance scheme for farmers, making digital payments to tea gardens where the existing ATMs often conk up, no provincialization of any educatiol institutions in the State in the past two years, no posting of doctors to many newly set up model hospitals in the State, mortality of infants and mothers in the State etc. “What makes everybody in the State hang his/her head in shame is that doctors are rushed to the medical colleges in the State when there is inspection by the MCI,” he added.