Cbi Bid To Hasten Probes

This has come to light in the case of the power ministry in which the CBI is marking for the minister a copy of the communication sent to the power secretary.

This seems a well thought-out strategy on the part of CBI to ensure that no one person in the ministry is able to sit over these cases, said an official.

It is learnt that besides the well-publicised case concerning the award of a Rs 200 crore contract for high-voltage direct current transmission in 1995, the CBI is looking into at least two more cases of alleged favouritism in the power sector.

 

The prominent among these cases is the one concerning the bail-out of a French consortium led by CEGELEC of GEC Alsthom group from its contractual obligations in the 390-mw Dulhasti hydel project of the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC).

Civil work on the project was stopped in August 1992 with contractors citing militancy in the area as the reason for the shut-down.

However, it was learnt that the main reason was financial.

The government, for the reasons best known to it, allowed the civil contractor to walk out of the project without paying any penalty to National Hydro-electric Power Corporation. This resulted in the project cost going up from Rs 1,262 crore to more than Rs 3,500 crore. Moreover, the completion date of the project, which was fixed as August 1994, has now been put off by 10 years.

It is also alleged that it is not without any reason that the government went out of its way to agree to give counter-guarantee to the Ispat Group's Bhadravati project in which GEC of UK, a member of GEC Alsthom group, is a collaborator. The MoU for the project was signed in London in the presence of Narasimha Rao.