THE Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) on Tuesday filed a chargesheet against 12 accused, including five former government employees, for various irregularities detected during a probe into the tender process of the Mokhabardi Lift Irrigation Scheme of the Gosikhurd irrigation project. An FIR was lodged in the case on June 23, 2016 at Nagpur’s Sadar police station. “After investigation into the case, various irregularities were confirmed, on the basis of which a 4,457-page chargesheet was filed in the special ACB court here on Tuesday,” a press note issued by the ACB said. The 12 people named in the chargesheet are then Chief Engineer Sopan Suryawanshi, then Executive Engineer Umashankar Parvate, then Senior Divisional Accountant Chandan Jibhkate, then executive director of Vidarbha Irrigation Development Corporation (VIDC) Devendra Shirke, then Superintending Engineer Dilip Pohekar, partners of the accused joint venture (JV) companies R J Shah and Co Ltd and D Thakkar Construction Pvt Ltd, namely Kalindi Shah, Tejaswini Shah, Vishal Thakkar, Pravin Thakkar, Jigar Thakkar, Arun Kumar Gupta (the company’s technical director) and Ramesh Kumar Soni (power of attorney holder). The ACB’s press note said that VIDC officials and JV company officials had entered into a criminal conspiracy to decide the award of the Rs 56,57,32,580 contract in favour of the JV company by faking the entire process. The chargesheet details how VIDC officials committed irregularities by not properly scrutinising the “fake” eligibility documents submitted by the company. “The officials facilitated the accrual of illegal financial benefit to the accused company,” the chargesheet said. “The JV company had concealed that it was executing that the Dagadparwa project of the VIDC at Akola to win the Mokhabardi contract. It had also paid earnest money deposit of a rival company in the tender process to create artificial competition to corner the bid,” the chargesheet read.
