CBI chases top officials from mining ministry, entire NALCO board

Top officials of the Union ministry of mines along with the entire board of the National Aluminium Company Limited (NALCO), a public sector undertaking (PSU), is under a cloud after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) sought permission to investigate and prosecute them.

The CBI sent an application in the last week of September seeking sanction under section 6 of the Delhi Police Special Establishment Act. The list of the accused includes the current secretary, mines, Subrahmanyam Vijay Kumar, special secretary Sanjay Srivastava and other board members of NALCO. An approval is mandatory to investigate an alleged offence committed by an officer of the rank of joint secretary and above.

It would be a rare occasion in the history of PSUs if the CBI gets the go-ahead to investigate an entire PSU board. The case pertains to the awarding of a Rs200-crore contract (Rs104 crore goes to the private company) to a little-known Bhubaneshwar-based company for ferrying slurry ash from NALCO’s mines through a 21-km pipeline — a job that requires tremendous technical expertise and high precision skills.

Preliminary investigations show that the contract went to a company called Usha Project (India) Ltd, which has been posting losses or no revenue consistently for the last three years. Records accessed from the registrar of companies show that it had not posted any profits or losses in 2010-11. A similar record exists for the previous years.

Worryingly, the decision to award this contract to such a company was cleared by the board of which Kumar was secretary. Kumar, a 1976-batch IAS officer from the Himachal Pradesh cadre, is no stranger to controversy. He has been known to take questionable decisions. The CBI is looking into another case that relates to his role in the ministry.

The case would have been buried but for a Congress MP from Orissa.

Amarnath Pradhan has been following the case doggedly, and he raised the issue again with current union mines minister Dinsha Patel on November 8 and submitted a detailed six-page letter at a meeting of the parliamentary consultative committee.

Interestingly, the allegations of violations in the contract had already been sent to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) which clearly stated that the matter must be looked into by the CBI and the role of all board members of NALCO investigated. The ministry reacted to the CBI application for sanction to investigate and prosecute Kumar and his senior colleagues with a typical bureaucratic response. It pointed out that sanction would take time because the case was being “independently” inquired into by another officer.

This is a fallacious inquiry, instituted to create a smokescreen. For the inquiry, sources said, they chose an IAS officer who was joint secretary in the ministry a while ago. V K Thakral, a 1983-batch IAS officer from the Assam cadre, the ministry claimed, was looking into the allegations. The question is how could an officer, who was once a part of the ministry and NALCO board member conduct an “independent” inquiry? How can Thakral inquire into the role played by his seniors, including Kumar?

In the dock is also Sanjay Srivatsava who was additional secretary in the ministry when the CVC passed this order. Curiously enough, in contravention of the government’s guidelines, Srivatasva was promoted despite the CBC’s adverse observations. It is not clear how he managed to get a mandatory “vigilance clearance” to be promoted to special secretary. Patel did not respond to a detailed questionnaire DNA sent to him.

The company sent a response stating “the contract has been awarded on a competitive bidding basis to a consortium of which we are the leading partners and there has been no compromise in the award and we are not aware of any fraudulent transaction or irregularities in the said case”.