Citizen Subba?

Being probed for his 8216;fake citizenship8217;, the Congress MP from Assam struggles to retain his Lok Sabha membership

It could be construed as the great Indian dream at its best, a nightmare at its worst: a man with allegedly fake Indian citizenship, false name, date of birth and reported criminal antecedents aspires to and becomes a member of the Indian Parliament.

Despite the recent reportedly adverse CBI report submitted to the Supreme Court, Mani Kumar Subba, alias Maniraj Limboo, continues to be the Congress MP from Assam. While state Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has refused to ask his senior party colleague to quit the Lok Sabha, his Education Minister Ripun Bora has demanded that Subba resign immediately.

8220;It is a sub judice matter. I will wait for the law to take its own course,8221; Gogoi told The Indian Express, claiming that the latest episode would not have any adverse impact on the Congress8217; prospects in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Subba8217;s political journey began in 1998 when he contested from the prestigious Tezpur Lok Sabha constituency and won. He was re-elected in 1999 and then again in 2004. While it was former Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Gegong Apang who introduced Subba, then a contractor in the hill state, to then Assam Congress strongman Hiteswar Saikia, the alleged Nepali citizen soon won over the latter and was appointed treasurer of the APCC. In 1991, Subba became an MLA from Naoboicha, and won again in 1996, but quit after winning the 1998 Lok Sabha polls.

However, the long political innings has been richly interspersed with controversies and allegations. It has been said that he is a Nepali citizen who acquired Indian citizenship fraudulently. In 1998, the CAG had named him as the kingpin in the Rs 38,000-crore state lottery scam in Nagaland during the chief ministership of S.C. Jamir now Goa governor.

He was again in the news in 2004 over the murder of his assistant in his Delhi farmhouse, for which his wife Jyoti and brother-in-law Narendra Limboo were arrested. In 2006, the Enforcement Directorate served him with a show-cause notice for alleged foreign exchange violations worth Rs 8.52 crore. He also faced a CBI probe following a complaint by then chief minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta.

According to documents sent by the Home Ministry to the CBI, Subba was sentenced to life in a murder case in Nepal and was involved in 8220;anti-national8221; unrest in Sikkim. The other cases against him include defaulting in payments to Sikkim and Manipur governments and one for making payments to Northeast8217;s largest insurgent group, NSCNIM. The Union Home Ministry, in a letter dated June 24, 2000, had put it on official record that the Nepal government confirmed that 8220;Mani Raj Limboo alias Mani Kumar Subba was a resident of village Somangkhu ward No 8, Sangsabu, Tamarkhola Area Gram Panchayat, District Taplejung, Eastern Nepal.8221;

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Born in Sangsabu village in eastern Nepal, Subba is said to have migrated in 1962 to Sikkim, and three years later moved to Tinsukia in upper Assam. Subba was also reportedly arrested in connection with a robbery in Tinsukia soon after he moved there.

According to documents with the CBI, he reportedly went back to Nepal, where he was arrested in a murder case. Sentenced to life, he allegedly escaped from the Eelam Jail in eastern Nepal after 18 months and came back to Tinsukia. Subba then moved to Arunachal Pradesh, where he rose to an important position in the Congress before moving to Assam.