In an attempt to come clear of the controversy generated by its Director (Finance), Ravi Khandelwal complain to the Chief Vigilance Commission on irregularities committed by the ITI management, the PSU has come out with a rejoinder, which does not touch on specific charges that payments to private vendors were made without recovering the dues from them.
Responding to a report published in The Pioneer in its edition dated April 2013 titled: ‘loss-Making PSU ITI lining coffers of Pvt firms’, the PSU said it refuted all the allegations about undue favour shown by ITI to any of the private firms as contained in the letters of Ravi Khandelwal.
“We hereby clarify that for the execution of 9 million GSM order from BSNl west zone, M/s Alcatel-lucent are the technology partners to ITI and tripartite agreement had been signed between ITI, Alcatel-lucent and BSNl for the execution of 9 million Phase II project on 7th August 2009. All invoices were being raised by ITI on BSNl against the work executed by Alcatel-lucent as per this tripartite agreement between ITI, BSNl and Alcatel-lucent. The signing of invoices for the work executed by M/s Alcatel-lucent has also been ratified by ITI Board,” the company said.
It said M/s HCl limited was also ITI’s technology partner for the IT solution as a System Integrator for GSM project and payment to the vendor is per the agreement between ITI and HCl.
ITI also clarified that M/s Exicom were already the partners of ITI for SMPS project for many years and the award of UP Police Contract for Solar Panels to EXICOM was ratified by the Board of Directors of ITI.
With respect to the payments from M/s Trimax who has been provided space and utility services for the Data Centre Business in Bangalore, ITI clarifies that payments referred in the news item have already been recovered fully from the party as per the approval of the Board of Directors of ITI.
As far as the membership fee of the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland and Financial Services Institute of Australia is concerned, the same has been made to the CMD, ITI, as per the approval of Board of Director of ITI.