Minister Kiren Rijiju is facing allegations that he facilitated a 450-crore hydro-electric project scam
Highlights
- Scam linked to fake invoices for dam being built in Arunachal Pradesh
- Anti-corruption officer met with man who called Rijiju "brother"
- Conversation was taped. He is not blood relative: minister
Kiren Rijiju, Union Minister, has firmly denied a family-style scam in his home state of Arunachal Pradesh, as alleged by the opposition today. "Anybody can be
bhaiyya," Mr Rijiju told NDTV about being referred to as "brother" in a taped conversation that, according to the Congress, nails his role in a 450-crore swindle.
The estimate of the scam was offered by an anti-corruption official last year in a report on a hydro-electric project in Mr Rijiju's constituency. The officer, Satish Verma, said that the state-run power company was being billed for imaginary or vastly exaggerated truck journeys to remove boulders and pave the way for the construction of two large dams. The report meant that payments were suspended for some time. Mr Rijiju says that's when locals approached him for help. On their behalf, he says, he wrote in November last year to Power Minister Piyush Goyal, asking that the money be released.
The Audio Tape Congress Produced Against Minister Kiren Rijiju
(NDTV cannot verify authenticity of this audio.)The Congress says that what Mr Rijiju did not disclose in the letter is that a cousin, Goboi Rijiju, was a sub-contractor attached to the project. And it has released a recording of Goboi Rijiju's conversation with the anti-corruption officer in December last year, in which he refers repeatedly to "bhaiyya" or brother, whose assistance he volunteers in the context of the officer's promotion.
Mr Rijiju said Goboi "is not a blood relative," adding that in tribal communities and villages, "everyone is related to each other in some way." Dismissing the opposition's claim that he intervened in a financially-iffy landscape to help a relative, who, in turn, appears to offer Mr Rijiju's influence to aid a promotion, the minister said, "Anybody can be
bhaiyya....We belong to the same village. That's all."
Mr Rijiju also said that the contracts for the hydro-electric project were decided by the Congress when it governed Arunachal, and that "most of the payments were also made during the Congress' time." He said his intervention was solely to assist the small-time daily contractors and workers in his constituency.
When asked about the report that claimed corruption worth 450 crores, he told NDTV, "the entire project will not be (worth) that much."