Arunachal CM Pema Khandu has overseen a tender process so meticulous that the contracts kept arriving at his wife's company, his nephew's company, and 59 work orders that skipped tendering altogether. Eleven of those work orders blew past the Rs 50 lakh no-tender ceiling. The Supreme Court has now asked the CBI to look into how that 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.