GUWAHATI: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday hit back at Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, threatening to file a criminal defamation suit against him.
“Stop sermonising and I will see you soon in Guwahati as you will face criminal defamation,” Sarma tweeted.
The statement comes hours after Sisodia slammed the BJP, claiming Sarma had indulged in corruption by awarding contracts of PPE kits and other Covid-related items to his wife Riniki Bhuyan Sarma and son’s business partners.
Sarma also issued a statement, directed at Sisodia, through Twitter.
“Manish Bhai, most surprising that you once claimed to be an ‘anti-corruption’ activist. At that point of the Covid wave, we in Assam did not have a single PPE kit. After hectic efforts, my wife managed to bring in a few kits to save precious lives. Although the NHM issued an order, the company raised no bill and the kits were gifted to the Govt,” the Assam CM wrote.
He asked how there was corruption when not a single penny was transacted. He said due to acute shortage then, every government, including the Delhi government, had waived the tender process for PPE kits and went for direct purchase.
“Don’t cherry-pick from half the documents. Have the courage to put all the facts. Don’t show half of a document trail, have the courage to put all the facts?” Sarma further wrote.
Two days ago, his wife had dismissed the charges as “unfounded”.
She said in the first week of the pandemic when not a single PPE kit was available in Assam, she had reached out to a business acquaintance and delivered around 1,500 PPE kits to the NHM with a lot of effort.
“Later on, I wrote to the NHM to treat the same as a part of my CSR. I did not take a single penny out of this supply. I have always been transparent about my belief in giving back to the society, irrespective of my husband’s political standing,” she had said.