A Public Interest Litigation filed seeking probe into the alleged collection of donation from multinational companies and drilling contractors, may spell trouble for top officials of country’s oil giant Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC).
A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed seeking probe into the alleged collection of donation from multinational companies and drilling contractors, may spell trouble for top officials of country’s oil giant Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC).
A bench of the Gujarat high court consisting of chief justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya and justice JB Pardiwala issued notices to ONGC, Central Government and Central Vigilance Commissioner following primary hearing of the case. The next hearing of the petition has been adjourned for three weeks.
The PIL has been filed by KC Harikumar, chief geophysicist and Anil Dhavan, chief engineer of ONGC. Counsels for the petition, Mukul Sinha and KG Pillai submitted that RS Sharma, the then CMD of ONGC and Sudhir Vasudeva, the then director (Offshore), Mumbai and now CMD of ONGC, together with the help of other directors and senior officers had helped ONGC Mahila Samithi headed by Rashmi Sharma, wife of RS Sharma in collecting a huge sum of money - to the tune of Rs3.257 crores - as donation from 49 multinational contractors including Schlumberger, Reliance Industries. The companies have contracts of offshore drilling in Mumbai.
The counsels further submitted that the donations were collected in the name of charity. Acceptance of such donations is in contravention to the rules of the corporation and anti-corruption law. Before filing the PIL, the petitioner officers sought information through RTI and after gathering concrete information they made complaints under the Whistle Blower Policy to the ONGC, CVC and to the Union government. But their petition went unheeded.
In the complaint forwarded to the CVC, the petitioners had given details of corruption in ONGC and furnished details of benefit that the contractors extracted from ONGC with the donations.
The petition also alleges that under the chairmanship of RS Sharma, ONGC adopted the Mahila Samithi headed by Sharma’s wife, as a partner in the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and diverted huge funds under the guise of social work in the year 2010-2011. Another amount of Rs4,11,53,667 was given as grant. This fund allocation led to misuse and misappropriation.
The petition further urges that in the larger interest of the organisation and the nation, a thorough investigation needs to be ordered.
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