GUWAHATI: The recent alleged “land and subsidy scams” relating to Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s wife Riniki Bhuyan Sarma, has resurrected debates and discussion of the previous alleged scams, wherein the Assam chief minister has been accused of.
Here’s a list of previous scams and extortion allegations against Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma.
LOUIS BERGER SCAM
Prior to Himanta Biswa Sarma joining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2015 ahead of the state elections in Assam, he was a “key suspect” in the multi-crore Louis Berger ‘scam’.
In fact, the BJP had released a booklet in 2015, accused Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who then was a senior Congress leader and a minister in the Tarun-Gogoi-led Assam government, of being a “key suspect” in the multi-crore Louis Berger ‘scam’.
In July 2015, Louis Berger International Inc, a New Jersey-based construction management company, told a US court that it had bribed government officials in India to win a project management consultancy in a water supply project in Guwahati.
The US court documents revealed that the firm and several consortium partners paid bribes of 9,76,639 dollars for two water development projects in Goa and Guwahati in Assam.
Himanta Biswa Sarma’s name figured in the case as he was minister in-charge of Guwahati Development Department that was the nodal department for implementing the water supply project.
A CBI investigation in the case failed to make much progress as at least seven important files related to the project had gone missing from the GMDA office in 2011 and they are yet to be recovered.
Recently, Assam Congress president Bhupen Borah had said: “He (Himanta Biswa Sarma) is accused of several financial scams. It is purely the fear of going to jail that made him join the current ruling party.”
SARADHA SCAM
Saradha scam was a major political scam involving several eastern Indian states caused by the collapse of a Ponzi scheme run by the Saradha Group.
Mastermind of the scam and Saradha Group chairman Sudipto Sen in his infamous 18-page confessional letter to the CBI named Himanta Biswa Sarma.
“Another high-level person has dramatically cheated me. He is Hemanta (Himanta) Biswa Sarma. For the last six months, apart from one and a half years, he has taken from us not less than (Rs) 3 crore, all by cash, and some vouchers have been signed by his office executives by some other means (sic)”, Sen wrote on page 11 of the letter.
In August 2014, the CBI raided Himanta Biswa Sarma’s residence in Guwahati and the office of News Live, an Assamese news channel owned by his wife Riniki Bhuyan Sarma.
It grilled Himanta Biswa Sarma for about eight hours in connection with the scam in November 2014.
News reports then said he was accused of receiving Rs 20 lakh every month from Sen in order to help him run his business in Assam without any hassles.
Calling it a political conspiracy, Himanta Biswa Sarma vowed not to contest the next assembly elections till his name was cleared
EXTORTION ALLEGATIONS
Two cases were registered at Chandmari police station (case number 77/1991) and Panbazar police station (case number 15/1991) in Guwahati city of Assam against Himanta Biswa Sarma in the year 1991.
The case registered at the Chandmari police station was related to an alleged extortion bid by Himanta Biswa Sarma on behalf of the ULFA.
He was allegedly “caught red-handed” while collecting Rs 10 lakh as extortion money on behalf of the banned insurgent outfit from Assam.
Himanta Biswa Sarma was then booked under sections of the TADA in March 1991.
In the other case, registered at the Panbazar police station in Guwahati city of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma was booked under TADA in January 1991 for allegedly collecting Rs 7 lakh from a city-based businessman on behalf of the ULFA.
He was also sent to 15-day police custody for this alleged crime.
ARMS ACT CASES
A case was also registered at the Panbazar police station in Guwahati city of Assam against Himanta Biswa Sarma under sections of the Arms Act for allegedly possessing a revolver and 25 rounds of ammunition.
According to reports, Himanta Biswa Sarma had hidden the revolver and the ammunition in a kitchen of a hostel of Cotton College in Guwahati, where he was a student.
REOPENING OF TWO TADA CASES
THE Gauhati high court, on August 19, 2009, had directed the then Congress government in Assam to furnish records of the two TADA cases registered against Himanta Biswa Sarma, who was then the state’s health and family welfare minister.
A division bench of the Gauhati high court, comprising then acting chief justice Ranjan Gogoi and justice Brojendra Prasad Katakey, passed the order after hearing a PIL filed by a former Bihar BJP MP Sukhdeo Paswan, seeking reopening of the two cases against Himanta Biswa Sarma.
However, the Gaugati high court later acquitted Himanta Biswa Sarma in both the cases as the case diaries relating to the two TADA cases against him went missing.
MURDER ALLEGATIONS
Himanta Biswa Sarma’s name had come up for his alleged involvement in the ‘murder of Congress leader Manabendra Sarma, who was killed in broad daylight in February 1991.
Former Assam chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta at a press conference in 2019 claimed that Himanta Biswa Sarma was suspended from the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) because of his alleged involvement in the murder.
Mahanta had also alleged that Sarma, in a bid to allegedly save himself from being sent to jail, had sought help from then Assam chief minister Hiteswar Saikia.
Notably, Himanta Biswa Sarma was acquitted by the court from all the charges against him in connection with the ‘murder’ of Congress leader Manabendra Sarma.
PPE KITS SCAM
Himanta Biswa Sarma’s wife’s company, JCB Industries, was allegedly granted an urgent work order to supply PPE kits at the rate of Rs 990 each by the health department in 2020.
Sarma was heading the Assam health department then.
JCB Industries allegedly supplied only a fraction of what it was supposed to supply to the Assam health department as per the ‘urgent supply order’.
However, Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma and his wife Riniki Bhuyan Sarma denied the allegations.
FLYOVER SCAM
A flyover was inaugurated by Assam chief minister Sarma in Guwahati on November 4, 2021.
For only the inaugural ceremony a whopping Rs 45 lakh was allegedly spent.
The allegation is that the tender for the inauguration programme was invited almost five months after the flyover was officially inaugurated and the work order was given to the contractor after seven months.
The firm which was given the contract was also reportedly linked to Himanta Biswa Sarma’s family.
The tender advertisement was published in local dailies on March 9, 2022 – more than four months after the event on November 5, 2021.
Two Guwahati-based business houses – M/s JMK Construction and Supplier and Dreams A-Maze – and a contractor, Anjan Sarma, participated in the bidding.
In a strange coincidence, the address cited by all three bidders was from the same area – Kamakhya Dham, Guwahati.
The PWD granted the post-dated work to M/S Dream A-Maze. The firm is owned by Guwahati-based businessman Bhaskar Sarma.
(Article originally published in The Federal)