What happened
On April 6, 2026 the Supreme Court directed the CBI to conduct a 16-week preliminary inquiry into roughly Rs 1,270 crore of public-works contracts awarded between November 2015 and 2025 to four firms linked to Chief Minister Pema Khandu and his family — including Brand Eagles, run by his wife Tsering Dolma, and Alliance Trading Co., owned by his nephew Tsering Tashi. Other contracts allegedly involved his mother and his brother. The petitioners — Save Mon Region Federation members — flagged 59 work orders worth Rs 16.83 crore issued without any tender, of which at least 11 individually exceeded the Rs 50 lakh ceiling beyond which a tender is mandatory under state rules. On Monday, May 5, 2026, CBI officers arrived at the Civil Secretariat in Itanagar to begin the inquiry; Arunachal Civil Society has called a three-day dharna from May 4 to May 6 demanding a transparent probe. The CM has yet to publicly explain why the same set of family-linked firms kept winning the same kind of work for ten consecutive years.