IT dept scrutinising documents related to CWG contracts

The Income Tax department is scrutinising documents pertaining to individual bids and rate contracts submitted by the contractors to the Organising Committee as part of its probe to detect alleged financial irregularities in the Commonwealth Games.

The department, after two rounds of searches on major consortiums and contractors, has collected documents through which the contracts were granted but the needle of suspicion is on bids submitted by these contractors to the Games OC.

The competence of these bids will establish the fact that if these contracts were worthy enough to be awarded by the OC and other agencies to the said consortiums and contractors, sources said.

The contracts and award of works should be in favour of the revenue (government) and should comply with the existing market rates, they said.

A possible case of tax evasion would be framed when discrepancies are found under this head (wrong bids) and if the contractors were found to have wrongly invoiced their work, they said.

The I-T probe is specifically looking into the contracts awarded by the Games Organising Committee (OC) and the role of its officials and contractors including charges of bribing.

The department carried out simultaneous nationwide raids yesterday on 50 premises of four contractors who executed some Games-related works related to landscaping and beautification works of the Games venues.

The department had on October 19 carried out similar searches on four major consortia, including those related to BJP member Sudhanshu Mittal, which had bagged contracts worth Rs 700 crore.

The department is also scrutinising tax return details of previous years filed by the firms it searched yesterday as part of its nationwide operation at almost 50 locations.