Guj HC orders probe into collection of funds by ONGC officials

Some senior officers are accused of hepling the ONGC Mahila Samithi, headed by ex-CMD's wife to collect Rs 3.26 cr from as many as 49 contractors

The Gujarat High Court today ordered a probe into the PIL which alleged that some top officials of the ONGC had collected donations worth Rs 3.26 crore from multinational contractors in the name of charity.

A division bench of Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya and Justice J B Pardiwala today directed the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) to launch a probe into the allegations made in the PIL and submit a report in three months.

The PIL was filed by two senior officers of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), K C Harikumar and Anil Dhavan, seeking a thorough investigation into the case.

As per the petition, former CMD of ONGC R S Sharma and the then Director (Offshore), Mumbai, Sudhir Vasudeva, who was the CMD of ONGC in 2011, with the help of other directors and senior officers, had helped the ONGC Mahila Samithi, headed by Sharma's wife Rashmi at that time, to collect Rs 3.26 crore donations from as many as 49 multinational contractors, who had bagged work in ONGC Offshore, Mumbai.

"However, acceptance of such donation is against the ONGC rules as well as the Anti Corruption Law," the petitioners said.

The PIL also alleged that there was misappropriation of funds that was "illegally" collected by the ONGC officials.

After obtaining certain information through the Right to Information (RTI) Act, they had also filed complaints with the ONGC, CVC and the Union government.

"However, there was no action taken on the complaint filed by Harikumar and Dhavan, following which they approached the High Court," said their counsel Mukul Sinha

In their complaint to the CVC, the petitioners had given details of alleged corruption and furnished the details of benefit that the contractors extracted from the ONGC after giving donations.

The PIL also alleged that apart of the 'donation' amount, there was misappropriation of funds worth Rs 4 crore allocated for the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).