Mukul to soon inspect projects including new secretariat, question govt’s delay to complete Ampati football stadium

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaMay 24, 2025

Leader of Opposition Mukul Sangma has decided to soon inspect different projects including the proposed construction of the new government secretariat in the New Shillong Township (NST) even as he questioned the government’s decision to allegedly abandon the Ampati football stadium project in South West Garo Hills District.

Speaking to reporters, Sangma said, “We will be visiting the (construction) sites of different projects which are being taken up by this government, including the so-called new secretariat where the government has said that they are investing or rather spending Rs1000 crores.”

He added, “I don’t know what type of new secretariat they want to construct? How many rooms will be there? What is the total build up area? All these things will be required to be known by the public. People should know what will be the build up area, 1000 rooms if you build then 1000 rooms x Rs1000 it will be Rs1000 crores. How many rooms are there, how rooms are constructed and what is the kind of benchmark in as far as the quality is concerned? Are they constructing a seven star hotel standard or five star standard hotel?”

“All these things would be part of our exercise and I am concerned by the way the scarce resources from public exchequer whether it is from government of India or whether it is from the state government public money is public money. Therefore, we will have to be meticulous in our approach and also stringent in our approach. We will put the whole system under scanner and see that the interest of the people and interest of the state is protected,” Sangma further stated.

Slamming the government over the delay to complete the Ampati football stadium, the former chief minister said that “Ampati stadium is one of the infrastructures created along with other infrastructures you know at that point of time what we did was that okay both Shillong exist and Tura exist, we will host in the Eastern part and the Western part when we host the national games. Therefore keeping in mind the need to have land wherever land is available, so for Tura also the stadium which is constructed here replacing the earlier Dikibandi stadium, this stadium was supposed to be constructed in another area where we had around 25 acres of land but the government of the day chose to construct in the existing infrastructures, which were already created with the state fund.”

He stated that in fact construction works were going on in as far as that particular stadium is concerned that investment from the scarce resources from public exchequer was unnecessary nullified by utilizing that same infrastructure which were already being created with the money which was spent from the public exchequer, so these are duplicacy.

Sangma argued saying “You don’t construct a stadium in an area where you don’t even have a space for parking. You don’t have enough space for the sporting fans to stand in a queue while entering into the stadium. So there are many other issues related, you know, the security, overall checking and in the event of disaster, emergency exit this and that all these things are important.”

He further questioned what has stopped the government from completing this project Ampati football stadium.

“And not only that I have seen that over and above whatever money was sanctioned they have added some amount. Therefore, there will be necessity from the side of the people to know where had those money, which were earlier sanctioned spent under which different components of the work,” Sangma said adding “I have checked up with different components which were supported by that initial sanction amount and also the other components of work which were again funded by the state government. So it’s quite interesting because I have reasons to believe that there is a duplicacy in as far as that work is concerned. Similarly, there are similar kind of things elsewhere.”