The Heat is on | Madhya Pradesh
An e-tendering scam, an ex-minister from the BJP, intrigue follows investigation.
The arrest of two staffers of ex-water resources minister and current BJP MLA Narottam Mishra in the multi-crore e-tendering scam investigation has kept the state on the boil. While the ruling Congress government claims it's only following up on its poll promise to launch a crusade against corruption, the BJP insists that it is a pressure ploy to keep the opposition in check.
On July 27, the state's Economic Offences Wing (EOW) arrested Nirmal Awasthi, formerly a telephone operator at the minister's residence, and Virendra Pandey, an OSD to the ex-minister. The two were charged with conspiring to fix e-tenders of the water resources department, working in connivance with department engineers and a private company that managed the portal that provided the online service.
Awasthi and Pandey are now in judicial remand. EOW sources say the duo, part of Mishra's personal staff, were middlemen in the operation to fix tenders. Manish Khare, another middleman arrested in May, had apparently named them in this connection. The case against Khare and the staffers involves granting of a Rs 116 crore tender to a Gujarat-based firm.
Ex-minister Mishra, however, alleges that pressure is being put on the accused to name him in the scam. "The awarding of e-tenders involved senior officers the process could not have been manipulated by Class III and IV employees such as these staffers," he says.
The wives of Awasthi and Pandey have also filed a petition in the high court saying the same, that their husbands were booked to implicate Mishra. In their plea, the wives allege that after the Congress-JD(S) government fell in Karnataka, the ruling party was worried its government in MP too may fall and hence was harassing opposition leaders to pressure them.
It is true the pace of investigations into the alleged scams of the previous regime has picked up after the Lok Sabha election (the run-up to which had seen IT raids on the premises of Chief Minister Kamal Nath's aides and relatives). But political circles in Bhopal also show little surprise that Mishra is in the thick of things. A past master in the politics of defections, he is widely believed to have got Congress MLAs Chaudhry Rakesh Singh and Sanjay Pathak to switch to the BJP when they were in power.
Mishra has been very vocal about wanting to dislodge the Nath government by weaning away some Congress MLAs. He is also believed to be close to BJP president and Union home minister Amit Shah. Mishra has even been given a security upgrade by the Union ministry-he has now got Y category status, unusual for a common MLA.
Awasthi earlier worked with Mishra in a private capacity but secured a job as a peon in the law department about a year ago. Law was one of the portfolios Mishra held as minister. Pandey, on the other hand, has been with Mishra for many years and is a Class III employee of the water resources department.
The EOW still have custody of Awasthi and Pandey. If the duo sing, it could mean trouble for Mishra. The agency is also looking into an earlier case from 2008 in which the income tax department had found a connection between Mishra and shadowy businessman Mukesh Sharma. Mishra was then urban administration minister and documents found at Sharma's house apparently pointed to Mishra being a beneficiary of payments from a Hyderabad-based company. The ex-minister claims he was exonerated by the I-T department in the case. The EOW, of course, is a different agency.
Meanwhile, state sources say a relook is likely into the Vyapam scam and a pension scam in Indore, in which BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya is alleged to have had a role. Vijayvargiya doesn't spend much time in MP (he is in charge of West Bengal), but every now and then he too goes on about the Kamal Nath government.