Health Minister Satyendar Jain. (File)
The Central Bureau of Investigation has registered a case of alleged corruption against Delhi Public Works Department Minister Satyendar Jain for hiring creative professionals, allegedly without due diligence or adhering to rules and norms. The agency alleged that Jain entered into a criminal conspiracy with other PWD officials and approved hiring of 24 creative professionals in the department to suggest new architectural designs and bring down cost. The agency alleged that these professionals were supposed to be from reputed institutions such as IITs, IIMs, NITs and NIDs, but this condition was later omitted from tender documents.
The proposal was also to hire professionals through an “architect or architecture firm” but the company which was eventually hired had no such experience and had, in fact, never supplied highly skilled professionals, it is alleged.
Their past experience was limited to supplying stenos and peons, the CBI has alleged.
It also said the idea of outsourcing the work was wrong and its funding being done through contingency fund was also in violation of laid down norms. It alleged that the expenditure was first put under the head of ‘elevated corridor for Barahpullah III’ but was later changed to ‘1,000 mohalla clinics’.
The FIR says that even the number of professionals to be hired was increased from the initially proposed 17 to 24 arbitrarily, and no market survey was done to arrive at their emoluments, which were fixed in the range of Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh.
The CBI had registered a preliminary enquiry (PE) in the matter on April 5 last year and had converted it into a regular case after it claimed to have found prima facie evidence. The PE had been registered on the recommendations of the vigilance department of Delhi, which had received a reference on the matter from Lt Governor Anil Baijal.
Jain is already facing a CBI case related to alleged money laundering. In the new case registered on Tuesday, the agency also named the then officials of the PWD — engineer-in-chief S K Srivastava, principal director (projects) Manu Amitabh, deputy director (admin) A K Pait and project manager P C Chanana as accused.
The CBI teams on Wednesday carried out searches at various locations, including the residence of Jain and other accused. During a year-long preliminary enquiry, the CBI claimed it found that during 2015-16, Jain had allegedly “entered into a criminal conspiracy with officials of the PWD to award the tender to Soni Detective and Allied Services” for hiring the creative team for the department’s works.
It alleged that the accused “abused their official position to change the terms and conditions of the notice inviting the tender” to bring within the eligibility criteria the company, which had no prior experience of such work.
The order, issued by the OSD to Jain, D C Goel, had proposed hiring of the creative team for PWD work to brainstorm and plan not only architectural designs of government buildings, but also develop cost-effective methods of construction, it said.
In September 2015, it was proposed that young professionals from reputed institutions could be hired with monthly emoluments ranging from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh for the creative team as the PWD did not have such in-house capacity, the enquiry report said.
“No minutes of any meeting held by Jain are available based on which this decision to hire the creative team was purportedly taken. Similarly, there was no request from the PWD for hiring of such a creative team,” the agency alleged.