Among the officials who have been cleared by the L-G, after he rejected the recommendations of the ACB to prosecute them, are former transport commissioners R Chandramohan (now retired) and R K Verma, who recently took over as power secretary.
The ACB had alleged official collusion with a private firm for issuing fitness certificates to commercial vehicles plying in Delhi without actually carrying out any tests. Eight officials had been named. The allegation was that the company, ESP India, had been fraudulently given a contract to do the job without inviting a tender. It was alleged that ESP India was given the contract under the assumption that it represented one ESP USA, which was earlier chosen through global tendering for supplying machinery to set up a transport authority at Burari in north Delhi.
ACB had alleged that the two companies did not have any links with each other and that ESP India was formed in 2006 with dishonest intentions. Estimates put the total size of this scam at more than Rs 100 crore. After conducting a preliminary inquiry, the ACB had filed an FIR in the matter on December 17, 2012, and made four arrests in the case.
In a surprise move on August 12, Jung's order cleared all the eight officials, stating that "after careful consideration of the facts and material on record, no case is made out under Prevention of Corruption (POC) Act or section 409/420/120-B against any of the officers based on the evidence placed before the LG."
The LG's order says that ESP India had intimated the transport department about its incorporation through a letter dated August 21, 2006, and that ESP Inc USA had informed the registrar of companies, Maharashtra, vide letter dated June 19, 2006, that they had no objection to the use of the word, ESP, in the name of the company to be incorporated in Mumbai by the accused, Nitin Manawat and his wife (owners of the company). The order also claims that ESP, USA, issued a certificate of authorization dated May 1, 2008, to ESP India to represent ESP USA in tenders and technical presentations.
According to documents available with TOI, the ACB has written to the directorate of vigilance on August 19, seeking "a fresh view in the matter so that there is no miscarriage of justice." It has pointed out that the documents on the basis of which Jung gave the clean chit were never placed before him by the bureau, the sole investigating agency in the case.
"The para (2) of the order says that LG has considered the material placed by ACB which does not appear to be the fact...But actually none of these documents is available on the relevant files of the transport department, nor any such letters came before ACB during investigation," reads the ACB letter.
The bureau has further said that these documents (referred to by the LG) were not shared with the ACB by either the transport department officials during investigation or by the accused persons, Nitin Manawat and Puran Chand Tamta, owners of the accused firm, ESP India, that benefited from the scam during the custody period that lasted over 90 days.
Faced with this complete divergence of views between the ACB and LG, TOI sent a questionnaire to the LG's office asking for the source of the documents and pointing out the ACB's objections. We got a one-line reply on phone after we waited for over 24 hours. "The decision was taken on the basis of documents on record," said an official from the LG's office, who didn't wish to be named.
The ACB has stated that it is in the process of moving prosecution requests against a few more officials. "We have requested for prosecution sanction for the officers against whom the investigation has been completed and about others the request will be made as soon as the investigation is completed," reads the ACB order.
According to the FIR, the Delhi government lost crores by awarding the contract of operation and maintenance work of I&C lanes (inspection and certification) at Burari authority to ESP India Pvt. Ltd. The company did not conduct certain tests it was required to and charged money for them. Moreover, eight additional test lanes worth around Rs 7 crore were allotted to the company. Also, the contract was allegedly awarded without any tenders being called.
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