M A I N   N E W S

Highway to corruption
Two top NHAI officials booked for graft
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 25
The CBI has registered a case of criminal conspiracy and corruption against top officials of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), New Delhi, for allegedly abusing their official position and favouring a particular construction company in award of contracts.

An FIR has been filed against NHAI’s chief general manager SK Nirmal, general manager Nitin Jain and KS Bakshi, managing director of Oriental Structure Engineers Private Ltd, a Delhi-based road construction firm.

A CBI spokesperson said the modus operandi of Nirmal and Jain was to eliminate all potential contenders on one pretext or the other and favour the Bakshi’s company, ensuring huge financial gains to it.

In its raids at the residences of the accused, the CBI recovered a total of Rs 1 crore cash from Jain’s two residences in New Delhi and Jaipur, besides 100 gm gold. From Nirmal’s residence, the sleuths have recovered 360 gm of gold so far. CBI said searches were going on at eight places, including offices of the accused. Another employee of the construction company, SK Dikshit, has also been booked.

The accused officials had awarded the company the contract of the development, operation and maintenance of the four-laning of Nagpur-Betul section of NH-69 from in Madhya Pradesh and another stretch of the highway in Maharashtra on design, build, finance, operate and transfer (Annuity) basis through public-private partnership.

The CBI said the NHAI had received 13 offers for above project, of which four were rejected by officials on “frivolous” grounds at the qualification stage. Later, four other companies were also eliminated by making stipulations pertaining to submission of original documents in gross violations of the conditions of the tender.

The CBI suspected that the officials would also clandestinely part with key confidential, strategic and vital information to the employees of the accused company during the process of tender and facilitated the calculation of annuity by applying financial parameters on the upper side to enable the accused company to fetch huge pecuniary benefits in the aforesaid award of the contract.