THE JHARKHAND STORY NETWORK
Ranchi, May 17: Jharkhand Congress President Rajesh Thakur has said that Rural Development Minister Alamgir Alam has not resigned following his arrest in the “tender scam’ nor we will tell him to quit.
Thakur said that it depends on Alam if he quit the ministerial post on moral grounds. “There is no pressure from the party on him to quit,” he said.
Alam, the Congress legislature party leader, holds two crucial portfolios in the Champai Soren Cabinet-Rural development and parliamentary affairs.
He was responding to various news reports which said today that Alamgir Alam had resigned from his post before he went into the ED custody for six days to undergo interrogation in the Tender scam.
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The Congress state president said that Alam was cooperating with the ED in its investigation into the cash haul of over Rs 37 crore recovered from the premises of his private secretary Sanjiv Lal and assistant Jehangir Alam. “He was not going to disappear anywhere. Yet the ED arrested him. It was wrong,” he maintained.
Thakur said that the ED, after two days’ interrogation, has already concluded that the sum of over Rs 32 crore recovered from Jehangir Alam’s flat belonged to the minister. “So, where is the need to question him further? The ED should have straightaway filed a chargesheet,” he added.