Bhopal: A huge row on Tuesday erupted over the recent order by the Engineer-in-Chief (ENC) of state public health engineering (PHE) department for a probe against his own minister into the charges of corruption leveled against her with deputy chief minister Rajendra Shukla taking strong exception to it. State PHE minister Samapatiya Uike was aghast against the probe order issued against her by her own department and raised the issue at the meeting of state cabinet, held here on Tuesday, sources said. The tribal minister pleaded her innocence and said that she was ready to face any probe, sources said. Later in his post-cabinet meeting briefing, Mr. Shukla said that it was not appropriate for the head of a department to order a probe based on a complaint which is political in nature against his own minister and indicated that action would be taken against the officer for it as per the law. He said the complainant has produced no evidence and only made wild allegations of corruption against the minister. The row was triggered by the recent order by PHE ENC Sanjay Andhavan issued to the chief engineers of the department for all regions of the state and the project director of the MP Water Corporation Limited, Bhopal, to probe into the claims regarding expenditure of the Central funds worth Rs 30,000 crore provided to the state government under the Jal Jeevan Mission. The order dated June 21 has also sought an investigation into the properties of the departmental minister in PHE and executive engineer, Mandla in the state, who faced charges of collecting money. The probe order comes in the wake of a complaint filed to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi by former MLA and national president of Sanyukta Kranti Party Kishore Samrite alleging that ministers, officers and contractors of Madhya Pradesh misused the Jal Jeevan Mission funds, allocated to the state for providing tap water to the rural households. The under secretary of the MP government referred the complaint in his recent letter to the PHE ENC, leading the latter to order a probe. With the issue threatening to snowball into a controversy, the ENC late on Monday evening issued a statement saying that the corruption charges leveled against the minister are baseless and lacked evidence to substantiate them.
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