A top official of a State-owned Telecom Company, ITI limited, has complained to the Chief Vigilance Commission against the company’s Chairman and Managing Director Kl Dhingra and Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal’s private secretary, Ranjan Khanna, accusing them of putting “undue pressure” on him to benefit private vendors.
ITI’s Director (Finance) Ravi Khandelwal wrote to the Chief Vigilance Commission (CVC) in February this year that Ranjan Khanna “continues to put undue pressure on me” to release payment to Alcatel —a French telecom giant. Sources claimed the payment was to the tune of Rs175 crore.
Khandelwal’s complaint to the CVC says he received several calls from Khanna’s number (9013130000) between February 1 and 19 during which the Minister’s private secretary (PS) even threatened to destroy his CR if the payment was not made to the private company.
Khanna is alleged to have made one such call to Khandelwal from Japan at 3.10 pm on February 15.
“He called me up again (on February 19) from his mobile phone and threatened me once more. He refused to give me an appointment to explain the complete case. He insisted that I clear the payment first and then seek an appointment from him,” reads Khandelwal’s complaint with the CVC.
CVC sources claimed that in July 2012, Khandelwal had brought to the notice of the anti-corruption watchdog that setting aside his objections, invoices for Rs100 crore were signed off in one day in favour of Alcatel, when he was on leave.
The decision was taken by the company’s CMD, Director (Production) and Director (Marketing), despite Khandelwal’s objection to release of payment to Alcatel without first recovering or adjusting outstanding claims of over Rs250 crore from the French company.
In his complaint to the CVC, the whistleblower pointed out that Rs100 crore was a substantial mount, especially keeping in mind the ITI’s meagre margin of 2.78 per cent in the project. With such slim margins on the purchase order of nine million GSM lines for the West Zone, ITI would have at best fetched Rs36.14 crore.
Compared to this margin, the outstanding amount of Rs250 crore was huge.
Incidentally, the pressure on the top ITI official to open the coffers for private vendors was despite the fact that the PSU incurred a loss of about Rs370 crore in 2011-12 and continued to make further losses.
With its units spread across the country, including one at UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s constituency Rae Bareli, the company has to depend on grants from the Government to pay salaries to its employees.
The whistleblower has brought to the notice of the CVC yet another incident that took place in October 2012, when Sibal’s PS and the CMD put pressure on him to release payments to HCl without first recovering Rs16.72 crore from the private company.
Around 3.30 pm on October 10, 2012, Khandelwal is reported to have received a call from the CMD’s office to attend a meeting at 5 pm at Khanna’s Sanchar Bhawan office in New Delhi. “When I reached the place, the CMD was already there with Ranjan Khanna and five senior officers of HCl (Sharma, Agrawal, Bedi, another unidentified person and two of their assistants).
“I was surprised to see HCl people sitting there too. It looked very fishy. After some discussion, I realised that this meeting was pre-planned to put pressure on me for the release of payment to HCl,” Khandelwal’s complaint with the CVC reads.
When Khandelwal told Ranjan Khanna that the company’s liquidity position was “very bad”, Khanna replied that he would speak to BSNl CMD RK Upadhyay and ask him to release some payments to ITI, and out of that payment the ITI must pay HCl.
“In between, Khanna left for 15-20 minutes stating that he had some work with the Minister. Immediately, the CMD of ITI also left along with the above mentioned unidentified HCl officer. Both rejoined the meeting in five minutes, but Khanna came back after 20 minutes. In between I insisted that HCl must first settle the compensation payable to ITI. HCl kept assuring us that they would do it soon but till date nothing has happened. When Khanna came back, he simply said generally that all the issues must have been discussed; and looking at me, he said now you release the payment. After sometime everybody left together at about 6.30 pm,” Khandelwal’s complaint reads.
It added, “I feel there was no need for such a meeting at Khanna’s level.”
CVC sources claimed Khandelwal has also pointed out other irregularities in ITI like awarding of UP Police’s Rs14-crore contract for solar panels to EXICOM, a sister concern of ‘tainted’ Himachal Futuristic Communications limited, on a nomination basis.
The Director Finance also pointed out that the company’s CMD had been deferring the decision on the recovery of lease amount (approximately Rs 2.5 crore) from M/S Trimax, which entered into an agreement with ITI in October 2008 for providing space and utility services for a Data Centre.
He had also objected to the release of Rs 35,000 to the CMD for his private membership of The Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland and Financial Services Institute of Australia on the grounds that “it had nothing to do with ITIs business”.
Some other cases of impropriety, involving the CMD, have also been brought to the CVC’s notice.