CBI chargesheets Karti, others in 2011 visa corruption case
The CBI has filed a chargesheet against Congress MP Karti Chidambaram and others in connection with alleged bribery in facilitating visas of Chinese nationals for a power company in 2011 when his father P Chidambaram was the Union Home Minister, officials said on Thursday.
In its chargesheet submitted before a special court here, the CBI has named Karti Chidambaram, the Lok Sabha MP from Sivaganga, his alleged close associate S Bhaskararaman, company Talawandi Sabo Power Ltd (TSPL), a subsidiary of Vedanta and Mumbai-based Bell Tools, through which bribes were allegedly routed, they said.
The agency has invoked charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating, and forgery under the Indian Penal Code and provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act, they said.
Other charge-sheeted accused include Viral Mehta, Anup Agarwal, Mansoor Siddiqui and Chetan Shrivastava, they said.
The CBI has filed the charge sheet after two years of probe into its FIR registered in 2022 where it had alleged that the Punjab-based TSPL was setting up a 1980 MW thermal power plant and the work was outsourced to a Chinese company Shandong Electric Power Construction Corp (SEPCO).
The project was running behind its schedule and the company was allegedly facing prospects of penalty.
“In order to avoid penal actions for the delay, the said private company (TSPL) of Mansa was trying to bring more and more Chinese persons and professionals for their site at district Mansa (Punjab) and needed project visas over and above the ceiling imposed by the Ministry of Home Affairs,” the CBI said in a statement in 2022.
The CBI FIR, which contained findings of the investigating officer who probed the preliminary enquiry, alleged that an executive of TSPL approached Karti Chidambaram through his “close associate/front man” Bhaskararaman.
“They devised a back-door way to defeat the purpose of the ceiling (maximum of project visas permissible to the company’s plant) by granting permission to re-use 263 project visas allotted to the said Chinese company’s officials,” the agency had said after the registration of FIR and searches.
Project visas were a special type of visa introduced in 2010 for the power and steel sector for which detailed guidelines were issued during Chidambaram’s tenure as home minister but there was no provision for the re-issue of project visas, the FIR had alleged.
“As per prevalent guidelines, deviation in rare and exceptional cases could be considered and granted only with the approval of the Home Secretary. However, in view of the above circumstances, the deviation in terms of re-use of project visas is likely to be approved by the then Home Minister...,” it had alleged.
