Rs 70 crore drawn for Nagaland HC building that doesn’t exist, CM faces ED heat
NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate recently questioned Nagaland Chief Minister Neiphiu Guolhoulie Rio in connection with the non-existent high court building at Kohima, the foundation of which was laid in 2007 and the state so far has withdrawn over Rs 70 crore towards its construction.
The basic structure of the site is barely in place, but the Nagaland government till 2018 allegedly withdrew Rs 44.24 crore against electrification and water supply for the project site besides another Rs 22.42 crore for the construction of bungalows for the judges, the area for which was not earmarked. The amounts were siphoned out between March 2009 and March 2017 through 18 withdrawals by Nagaland’s Justice and Law Department.
The questioning, which happened for several hours, took place last month at a military facility at Rangapahar in Dimapur, where Rio was summoned by the ED. The agency has been probing the issue after the CBI filed two charge sheets in the matter in January last at a special court in Dimapur.
Construction works of all the other high courts in the Northeast, including Meghalaya, Tripura and Manipur, which started simultaneously have long been completed and are fully functional since 2013.
In the absence of a high court in the state, the hearing of cases from Nagaland still continues at the Kohima Bench, housed in the Gauhati High Court.
When nothing happened till 2018, a set of petitions were filed by the Nagaland Tribes Council and some Nagaland-based social and RTI activists at the Gauhati High Court. A bench hearing the matter termed it “beyond belief” on learning that the government even paid Rs 1.3 crores as a consultancy fee for the construction.