ITANAGAR, OCT 11: How does a Chief Minister mark the completion of one year in office after successfully over-throwing his predecessor out in a bloodless coup? Ask Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Mukut Mithi, and he will say: ``by inviting the CBI to probe charges of corruption against GegonG Apang''.In fact, as Mithi's government completes one year today, he has announced that the CBI has been handed over as many as seven major cases of corruption, the sum involved in them running into more than Rs 220 crore.The most important of these seven cases is the one involving the state power department, which alone runs into Rs 200 crore, a story which was broken by The Indian Express three years ago.``There was a lot of corruption during Apang's time. In fact, large sums of money did not reach the common man. There was a politician-bureaucrat-contractor nexus operating in the state during his regime,'' Mukut Mithi told The Indian Express here today.The scam in the power department involves as many as seven hydel projects, apart from the one relating to construction of a major transmission line, the Chief Minister said.This scam apart, Apang has been also accused of misappropriation of funds in the Naharlagun water supply scams, the cost of which had run into Rs 10 crore, with the work still remaining to be completed, Mithi added. ``There is also one case about the government losing revenue to the tune of Rs 21.24 crore in the tax and excise department. We have handed it over to the CBI,'' the Chief Minister added.Another case pertains to non-delivery of 1,300 tons of cement to the rural works department for which a sum of Rs 1 crore was paid by the government to a contractor in 1988 when Apang was chief minister.
