NH land acquisition: Expedite probe into scam, demands BAYM

OUR BUREAU

SIVASAGAR/GAURISAGAR, June 16: The Brihattar Asomiya Yuva Mancha (BAYM) on Friday expressed discontent over the slow pace of inquiry into the alleged Rs 300 crore land acquisition scam.  

BAYM’s Demow unit president Jadumoni Kalita and chief secretary Anshuman Baruah in a statement alleged that the Sivasagar district administration is not keen to complete the probe into the alleged scam in time-bound manner.   

Earlier, the Sivasagar administration had ordered an inquiry into alleged anomalies to the tune Rs 300 crore in the acquisition of land for development of 40.75 km stretches of 4-lane highway under NHAI from Jhanji to Demow in Sivasagar district.

Miffed at the slow pace of probe, Baruah said that despite news being published in connection with alleged irregularities in the acquisition of land and handing over of compensation for acquired land and loss of other properties for widening of NH-37 in Sivasagar district, the district administration has failed to bring the culprits to book.

“The alleged scam is one of the key issues that the BJP-led State government needs to address at the earliest if it wants to keep face,” the BAYM leaders said, demanding that the probe should not be delayed any further and the guilty officers and employees be brought to book soon. They also threatened to launch a massive democratic agitation against the alleged scam.

Meanwhile, one landa Mazumdar Baruah, a resident of Sukanpukhuri village in Sivasagar, on Thursday filed an FIR at Sivasagar police station in connection with the scam. It was registered vide case No-331/2017 under section 420/468 IPC.

landa is the daughter of late Bijoy Mazumdar Baruah, a prominent businessman of Upper Assam, who was shot dead by ULFA in 1990. She is a resident of Sukanpukhuri area by the side of NH-37, which was acquired by the tiol Highway Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL) in 2015. However, in return of this land and property, the NHIDCL authority had sanctioned a total of Rs.1.61 core as compensation to the family. landa in her FIR stated that the compensation package was supposed to have been distributed equally among the three children of the family.