Y P Singh back, one up over state

And the CBI’s veil of secrecy on these investigations contributes to keep them so. Joint Director of CBI, Mahendra Kumawat, has consistently declined to discuss either Singh or his cases with Express Newsline.

Singh had been associated with some sensational cases during his tenure in the CBI. Almost all of them have been either closed or did not materialise into chargesheets.

Two of these have to do with corruption charges against former chief secretary, Dinesh Afzalpurkar, during his tenure as chairman of the Mumbai Port Trust. The first case was against Afzalpurkar and MbPT deputy chairman B P Pandey for allegedly “extending favours” to a Delhi lawyer, Kiran Chaudhary. These included leasing of three rooms in the Imperial Chambers, an MbPT property, at a throwaway price. While market rates were Rs 1,000 per square metre, Chaudhary was given the rooms at Rs 57.20 per square metre (later raised to Rs 542.57). Chaudhary was appointed as counsel for the MbPT.

Even as the CBI was looking into the alleged role of Jagdish Tytler, who was minister for surface transport at the relevant time and known to be the political mentor of Kiran Chaudhary, Y P Singh was repatriated to the state cadre in March 1996.

Said the CBI, he had botched up a raid on the Mumbai Passport Office, and was served a show-cause notice for alleged acts of commission and omission in other cases as well. The CBI has concluded that there is no evidence against Afzalpurkar in the MbPT case, and recommended action against S R Kulkarni, MbPT’s estate manager and a relatively junior official. If there was no irregularity, why is action being initiated against Kulkarni?

The other case in which Singh tried to get sanction to register a case against Afzalpurkar was the American President Lines (APL) case. APL was allegedly given a coveted berth at the Indira docks, with concessions that cost MbPT a loss of Rs 1.37 crore, while APL gained Rs 6.5 crore.

The ministry of surface transport did not grant sanction for this case, among other reasons, apparently because APL was seen as an experiment in liberalisation.

In the third case, Singh got orders from the head office to register a preliminary enquiry (PE) against a deputy general manager of the Bank of Baroda, Pune, NRC Panniker, and Suryakant Govindrao Pawar (Sharad Pawar’s brother) and his firm Sharda Erectors. In a representation made to the ministry of personnel last year, Singh has alleged major acts of falsification of records by Kumawat and DIG Raghuwanshi. He has alleged that in the Pune case, a closure report was made after a slipshod investigation by a junior officer, Arvind Rajbhoj.

Apparently, Bank of Baroda took premises from Sharda Erectors at a price higher than that prevailing in the market at the relevant time. According to Singh’s letter, while tenders had been called for taking the premises on rental basis, the deal was converted into one of ownership. The CBI’s head office had apparently approved a probe into similar deals by other public sector units also.

Singh also mentions a report of the Chief Vigilance Officer of the bank, of which two different interpretations seem to have been taken, one by Singh, when he sought the head office’s clearance for the PE, and the other which Rajbhoj seems to have taken while closing the case.

The most acrimonious seems to be Singh’s investigation into the lease of ONGC’s oil fields to the Enron-Reliance combine. One crucial file related to the probe has gone missing, and the Delhi High Court is now seized of the matter.