GUWAHATI, Sep 19: Sleuths of the CM Vigilance Cell quizzed former Congress MP Ranee Narah in the one-crore-rupee tubewell scam after she was summoned yesterday by the investigation agency to appear before it.
Ranee Narah, accompanied by her husband Bharat, arrived at the office of the CM’s Special Vigilance Cell at 11 am today.
“I was told to report to the CM’s Special Vigilance Cell office today. It’s a routine exercise. The last time I was summoned by the Vigilance Cell sleuths was in 2019,” the former Lok Sabha MP told media persons before entering the Vigilance Cell office for the interrogation.
The fund embezzlement allegedly took place in the 2013-14 fiscal for installation of hand pumps in Jorhat district when Ranee Narah, also a former union minister of State in the Manmohan Singh government, was an MP.
A CAG report on the anomalies was followed by a report to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Assam Assembly leading to which a case was registered in 2017 alleging large-scale misuse of funds under Narah’s MPLAD scheme.
The former Lakhimpur MP, meanwhile, is also under the eye of an even bigger storm amid allegations of land grab against her and her husband Bharat Narah.
The Narah couple has been accused of encroaching upon government land where they opened a tea estate in the name of Ranee Narah.
Not only did the Narah couple encroached upon Government land, they also forcefully evicted a number of flood-hit families from the said land who had settled there after losing their houses and properties in successive waves of devastating floods, Manab Deka, BJP MLA from Lakhimpur, alleged.
“Bharat Narah and his wife Ranee Narah have set up a tea estate (Ranee Narah Tea Estate) after encroaching upon government land and forcefully evicting some landless farmers where were staying there after losing their homes and properties to floods. They did this when Bharat Narah was a minister in the past Congress government,”Manab Deka alleged, and claimed that the Narah couple had through a person named Ajit Narah applied for possession of 128 bighas of the said land through the Mission Vasundhara portal.
The BJP MLA also claimed besides the tea estate, one bighas and four kathas of the residential property of Bharat Narah at Boginadi falls under government land which he and his wife had unlawfully grabbed. The allegations of Manab Deka were corroborated by victims who were forcefully evicted by Bharat and Ranee Narah.
