Guj HC asks CVC to probe allegation of corruption against ONGC officials

PIL filed by two senior ONGC officials sought investigation by CVC into the alleged corruption of over Rs 3 crore

Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) on Monday was directed by the Gujarat High Court to probe allegations of corruption against top officials of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), while acting on a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by employees of the oil PSU.

A division bench of Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya and Justice J B Pardiwala directed CVC to initiate probe within 15 days and completed it, preferably, within three months and submit the report to court, said K G Pillai, counsel of the petitioners.

The PIL was filed in 2011 by two senior officers of ONGC, K C Harikumar, chief geophysicist and Anil Dhavan, chief engineer.  They have sought investigation by CVC into the alleged corruption of over Rs  3 crore wherein donations were collected by top ONGC officials in the name of charity from multinational drilling contractors. They had further alleged 'misappropriation' of funds meant for corporate social responsibility.

According to case detials, the two ONGC officials, in their petition, had claimed that Rs  Sharma, the then CMD of ONGC and Sudhir Vasudeva, the then director (Offshore), Mumbai and now CMD of ONGC, together with the help of other directors and senior officers had helped ONGC Mahila Samithi headed by Rashmi Sharma, wife of RS Sharma, in collecting a sum of over Rs  3.26 crore as donation from 49 multinational contractors including Schlumberger, Reliance Industries. The companies have contracts of offshore drilling in Mumbai.

During the course of argument Pillai had argued that the donations collected were in contravention to the rules of the corporation and anti-corruption law. Before filing the PIL, the petitioners had sought information through RTI (Right to Information) Act, and after gathering concrete information they made complaints under the Whistle Blower Policy to the ONGC, CVC and to the Union government.

In the complaint forwarded to the CVC, the petitioners had given details of corruption in ONGC and furnished details of benefit that the contractors extracted from ONGC with the donations. But their petition went unheeded. Hence they had approached the High Court in 2011 seeking probe by the CVC into the matter.