A Bihar project file of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), with a Cabinet note in it, which went missing from the offices of top NHAI officials, has resulted in a PIL being filed in the Patna High Court. Disciplinary action is now being mulled against the officials in question and the issue has been referred for a vigilance inquiry.When the matter was dragged to the courts, the Ministry of Shipping, Road Transport & Highways woke up to the issue and initiated a massive file-hunt exercise at the NHAI. On the file trail, the NHAI finally submitted that between an NHAI member, a general manager and a manager, the file had gone missing. What made it suspicious was that the file being handed over to a senior official was not recorded on the file tracking system (FTS).The matter was referred to the NHAI vigilance division and two officials were found responsible. That, however, was not the end of the story. After the inquiry, the file was finally found in the vigilance division of the NHAI recently. An exasperated ministry has now shot off a missive to the NHAI for “sending wrong information” and is set to ask for strong disciplinary action against all the three officials associated with the movement of the file.The NHAI’s file on Bihar’s road projects under NHDP III — to connect places of social and economic significance with two-laned NHs — has been untraceable since 2007-end. The file numbered NHAI/BOT-II/11011/1/2006 had a Cabinet note inside it. The project pertained to a proposal to switch from BOT toll-based mode for highway upgradation to BOT annuity-based system. Even before the NHAI and the ministry got wind of the missing file, one Shashi Shekhar Prasad Sinha filed a PIL in the Patna High Court alleging that the file pertaining to the construction and repair of NH-77 and NH-104 and bridges was missing and there was a scam in the making.
