No sign of work to clean up Loktak Lake, says BJP

IMPHAL: As part of its campaign to rake up the multi-crore Loktak clean-up scam, the opposition BJP inspected the progress of cleaning phumdis (floating bio-mass or water hyacinth) from Loktak Lake on Monday. The party said there are no signs of work being undertaken at the lake located in Bishnupur district.
The saffron party accused the Loktak Development Authority (LDA), of which chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh is the chairman, of awarding a work order amounting to Rs 224 crore to the firm M/s K Pro Infra Works Pvt Ltd on August 1, 2009 for cleaning Phumdis (floating bio mass or water hyacinth) from the lake by violating all standing norms.
BJP's northeast in charge Chandrasekhar Rao, who led the inspection team, among other points, said the firm was the lone bidder in the tender process, a plan engineered by Ibobi Singh to dwindle the huge sum of money.
State unit BJP secretary (media affairs) Laimayum Bashanta Sharma, who also joined Monday's inspection at the biggest freshwater lake in the northeast, said three excavators kept for the cleaning phumdis were non-functional and no clean-up work was seen in the lake.
The matter will be highlighted in the Rajya Sabha through a calling attention motion for which a memo has been submitted to the upper house, he said.