A supplementary charge sheet of 115 pages on Thursday was submitted to a special judge by the Chief Minister's Special Vigilance Cell against five media proprietors including the former Director of Information and Public Relations (DIPR) Ranjit Gogoi for being involved in a scam of Rs.30 crores in connection with the scheme Vision Assam Mission Assam.
An official statement of the State government stated a prima facie case has been filed under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, against Ranjit Gogoi, Anjana Bora and Ranjit Bora of Brahmaputra Television Network, Dilip Kalita of Delta Publicity and Apurba Lahkar of Pradip Advertising & Co.
According to the FIR, the multi media campaign Vision Assam Mission Assam was outsourced to professional creative agency, production house and media buying agencies in the early part of 2016 at sky-high prices causing humongous losses to the government and corresponding illegal pecuniary benefits to the firms.
The project was executed through the DIPR and Rs. 34.2 crores were submitted to IPRD initially followed by a total of 20,63,73,261, it said
MLA Atul Bora of Dispur Constituency filed a complaint petition and an enquiry (NO. 01/2017) was initiated by the Chief Minister's Special Vigilance Cell as per approval of Sarbananda Sonowal, the statement said. Thereafter, based on the enquiry report an FIR was submitted (CMS (V) 111/2017/377, dated October 16, 2017).
The primary objective of the project was to highlight the achievement of the Government in various areas of work before the process of Assembly Elections 2016. However, the sanctioned amount was spent by awarding a contract to the media buying forms in exorbitant rates violating the rules and procedures, the statement added.
