Arunachal suspends 4 officers, seeks action against DC over Frontier Highway land scam

ITanagar: The Arunachal Pradesh regime has suspended quadruplet senior officers and recommended disciplinary sue against e Kameng surrogate commissioner and IAS officer Himanshu Nigam over irregularities in land compensation payments for the Lada–Sarli stretch of the Arunachal Frontier Highway, police said on Wednesday.The move follows the submission of an interim report by a Fact-Finding Committee (FFC), constituted on August 13 under the chairmanship of the transport commissioner, after a spate of complaints from landowners and social activists alleging fraudulent assessments and exclusion of genuine beneficiaries.According to the department of land management, the FFC’s interim findings—submitted to the state government on November 4—revealed that compensation was disbursed for non-existent assets and that several valuations were “grossly inflated and fraudulent.”The panel flagged “serious omissions and commissions” by the team responsible for ground verification and asset assessment.The suspended officers include Seppa divisional forest officer Abhinav Kumar (IFS), district agriculture officer Miram Perme, district horticulture officer C.K. Tayum, and district land revenue and settlement officer Takam Kechak.The state government has also written to the ministry of home affairs seeking the suspension of Nigam, who headed the compensation verification board.The controversy pertains to the 125.55-km Lada–Sarli segment of the Frontier Highway—a strategic infrastructure corridor under the Centre’s Arunachal Frontier Highway project. The land compensation award, sanctioned under the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (RFCTLARR) Act, 2013, was deposited with the East Kameng district administration on April 17, 2025.Several landowners have accused district authorities of bypassing mandatory public notifications and ground surveys, alleging that fake beneficiaries were compensated while legitimate landowners were left out.The FFC, which includes members from the departments of land management, forest, agriculture, horticulture, fisheries, and public works, has been given time till November 30 to submit its final report.The Arunachal Frontier Highway, spanning 1,748 km along the India–China border, is a flagship project aimed at bolstering road connectivity, border area development, and national security in remote regions of Arunachal Pradesh.