Alleging that the former Chief Minister and Telugu Desam Party national president Nara Chandrababu Naidu indulged in manipulation of tender process to allot the work order for the Phase-1 of the A.P. Fibernet Project of ₹330 crore in 2015 during the TDP rule to a favoured company, by flouting the rules, the A.P. Crime Investigation Department (APCID) filed a charge sheet on Friday, at the ACB Special Court in Vijayawada.
The CID alleged before the Court of Special Judge for SPE & ACB cases -cum-III Additional District & Sessions Judge, Vijayawada, that Mr. Chandrababu Naidu was responsible for removing M/s Terasoftware Pvt. Ltd. from the blacklist at that time and awarding the tender to it. The then Chief Minister also influenced the government officers to include Vemuri Harikrishna Prasad (another accused in this case), in various tender evaluation committees.
The investigation agency informed the court that Mr. Hari Krishna Prasad, Managing Director of Net India, Hyderabad, was the then member of the Governing Council, e-Governance Authority, Electronics & IT Agency and Innovation Society, and member of Technical Evaluation Committee.
The other accused Koganti Sambasiva Rao, IRTS, former VC & MD, INCAP, and MD, APSFL, currently working as Chief Commercial Manager, Passenger Marketing, South Central Railway, Secunderabad, allegedly manipulated the tender process by appointing Mr. Harikrishna Prasad as a member of the technical committee and tender evaluation committee, the CID alleged.
Both of them allegedly took part in the offence by preparing the estimates for the project in an ‘‘arbitrary manner without any market survey, extending the last day for filing the bids so that M/s Terasoftware Pvt. Ltd. could be removed from the blacklist, allowing the company to modify its consortium after starting of the tender process, allotting higher technical score to Terasoftware through various manipulations of the tender documents, and releasing funds to the company despite poor quality of work executed’‘.
The deviations committed at the time of execution of the AP Fibergrid Phase-I contract caused a loss of about ₹114 crore to the government exchequer. There would be further losses caused by the expensive operation and maintenance works and loss of revenue owing to 80% unusable optic fiber, the CID said.
The accused allegedly channelised the misappropriated funds through a web of companies belonging to their associates, using fake invoices, the investigative agency alleged.
After Mr. Chandrababu Naidu was arrested in the alleged Skill Development Scam case and was sent to judicial custody by the ACB Court, the CID had filed for a Prisoner Transit warrant to produce him in the Fibernet case, too, before the ACB Court. At that time, Mr. Chandrababu Naidu filed petitions seeking anticipatory bail, initially before the ACB Court and then the High Court of Andhra Pradesh. Both the courts declined to grant the anticipatory bail. He then approached the Supreme Court, seeking anticipatory bail and the hearing on the Special Leave Petition(SLP) is pending, a senior CID officer said.
