New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday (March 18) sought detailed responses from the Union home ministry, finance ministry and the Arunachal Pradesh government regarding alleged irregular tender allotments in the state after a plea sought an SIT probe against chief minister Pema Khandu over the same.A bench of Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna and Justices Sanjay Kumar and KV Viswanathan said that they “must have a clear-cut answer” on the parties that awarded public work tenders to companies that the petitioners alleged were owned by relatives of the incumbent chief minister, as reported by LiveLaw.“We would like a detailed affidavit from the state of Arunachal Pradesh to give details of the parties to whom contracts were awarded with reference to the contracts mentioned in the writ petition and additional affidavits,” the court said, as quoted in the report.When the CJI asked how many contracts were awarded, the report stated, advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the petitioners, responded, “Several hundred crores worth of contracts! Just for his wife’s company which is called Brand Eagle, about 70 contracts were given just to his wife’s company.”“The state is just being rioted, looted,” he said.Meanwhile, the state counsel for Arunachal Pradesh argued that the petition was politically motivated. “This a politically motivated (plea) and mylord let me also inform you , who is the petitioner mylords? A bunch of people which is unregistered – they just keep doing this because they don’t want any development in that state,” he said.Referring to the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report, CJI Khanna observed that the home ministry and finance ministry would be the appropriate authority to respond to the court’s queries and sought a reply from the ministers of both Union and states regarding the code of conduct to be followed by them.According to the petition, there was alleged partiality in giving away key tenders to the close associates of Pema Khandu, including to the construction company ‘M/s brand Eagles’ which belongs to Khandu’s spouse. Further, the chief minister’s nephew Tsering Tashi, an MLA from Tawang District, who owns M/s Alliance Trading Co., has also been awarded contracts without following due procedure, LiveLaw reported.According to a report by The Indian Express, another bench of the Supreme Court had on March 20, 2024, disposed of a plea by another NGO Voluntary Arunachal Sena, alleging the same and seeking direction to the CAG to examine the allegations.
