Dimapur: The Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee (NPCC) said the recent filing of an FIR by the CBI against additional secretary of the Nagaland agriculture department and two other high-ranking officials working in the Fostering Climate-Resilient Upland Farming System (FOCUS) project in the state in a bribery case involving more than Rs 2 crore was on expected lines considering the “stranglehold” of corruption at all levels of governance in the state authored and patronised by the “morally bankrupt” oppositionless state government.
The CBI filed the FIR against additional secretary Jitendra Gupta and two other officials working in the FOCUS project for allegedly receiving bribes of more than Rs 2 crore.
According to reports, the central agency had filed the FIR against the trio following a complaint from the air intelligence unit of the income tax department that they were travelling from Dimapur to New Delhi in a flight on December 17, 2023, allegedly with huge cash.
In a release issued by its communication department on Sunday, the NPCC lauded the welcome intervention of the law enforcement agency in the case. However, it said, it is nowhere near enough because what is being witnessed is just the tip of an all-pervasive mammoth iceberg of cancer eating away at the rights and wellbeing of the common people of Nagaland, one painful bite at a time.
“The rot is systemic, entrenched, and starts at the top, necessitating a troubleshooting exercise at a scale much more proportionate than the one under play now,” the NPCC said.
Strongly condemning what it called the vulgar fallout of corruption unfolding before “our eyes”, the Pradesh Congress Committee called upon the powers that be to mend their ways lest the “culture of decadence and ineptitude that they so shamelessly espouse now drags us all down to a point of no return”.