CBI searches premises of MTNL and HCL officials

The CBI registered a case and carried out searches on the premises of MTNL and HCL officials.

Two days after The Indian Express reported a Rs 570 crore scam pertaining to the Commonwealth Games,implicating the MTNL,the CBI on Wednesday registered a case and carried out searches on the premises of former top officials of the MTNL and Noida-based HCL Infosystems. The CBI said that MTNL officials in collusion with private firms allegedly inflated the cost of setting up a broadcast network for the CWG by nearly Rs 400 crore.

Those who have been named in the FIR are the then MTNL CMD,R S P Sinha,Executive Director S M Talwar,GM (Corporate Sales) N K Jain and DGM Jitendra Garg in Delhi,Noida,Jaipur and Patna and the officials of HCL. During searches conducted so far,documents relating to immovable and movable property belonging to accused persons and other incriminating documents have been recovered, said CBI spokesperson Dharini Mishra,adding that searches were on till late evening.

The agency stated in the FIR that officers of MTNL and other unknown private persons of HCL dealing in optical fibre transmission have been booked under prevention of corruption and criminal conspiracy. The allegations against them is that the MTNL awarded the work of broadcast network based on multi protocol lable switching (MPLS) at an exorbitant price of Rs 570.12 crore by manipulating the specification in such a manner as to make them tailor-made for HCL.

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The agency said that the broadcasting data transmission requirements for the CWG were very limited,based on optical fibre transmission,for which an initial estimate of Rs 31.43 crore was prepared. The MTNL in their proposal included broadcast video network based on Internet protocol MPLS technology that grossly enhanced the network costing by Rs 380.04 crore,allegedly with an intention to cause huge pecuniary advantage to the contracting firms, the CBI said.

The glaring irregularities in awarding the contract was highlighted by Shunglu Committee in which it was said,The MTNL was tasked with providing inter-connectivity between Games venues and the broadcasting centre at ITPO. Its costs were so high that a Working Group had to be constituted and costs were reduced to less than half of what had been proposed.

The CBI added that the contract resulted into huge loss to the exchequer and wrongful gain to HCL. The enhancements in the scope of work and engineering of conditions of contract were made by the officials of MTNL in such a manner that sub-contract could be awarded only to HCL.