Officials of the Tripura Police Crime Branch on Monday questioned the previous Left Front government’s Finance and Public Works Department (PWD) Minister Badal Choudhury for five hours.
The erstwhile Left Front government led by former Chief Minister Manik Sarkar had authorised a Hyderabad-based private company to construct the flyover in 2015.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led state government filed an FIR in March this year to probe alleged “irregularities in the project”.
The FIR has named two ex-PWD Chief Engineers and three others as accused.
“Some works are now going on. After completion of the works, the flyover would be inaugurated and opened for traffic,” Public Works Department Chief Enginnner (Roads and Bridges) Dipak Chandra Das told IANS on Tuesday.
When asked about the questioning of former PWD and Finance Minister Badal Choudhury, Deputy Inspector General of Police (crime branch) R. Gopala Krishna Rao said that they examined the former minister and cleared some queries about the flyover as he was the PWD Minister when the flyover project was sanctioned.
“Investigation is now going on. In the midst of the investigation we would not disclose anything,” Rao told IANS.
Badal Choudhury, Deputy Leader of the Communist Party of India-Marxist legislature group in the state assembly, however, said the BJP government had asked the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) to conduct a study on the quality, design, expenditure of the flyover.
According to him, the CSIR and the CRRI, had both categorically said that the flyover was fit for traffic.
The ex-minister even distributed copies of the CSIR and the CRRI reports to the media, saying “despite the completion of the work, the BJP government is yet to open the flyover for traffic. Politics should not be done over developmental works.” (IANS)
