Rajya Sabha MP Vivek Tankha has filed a complaint in the e-tendering scam of MP to the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) of India related, on Tuesday. Tankha has asked the CEC OP Rawat to intervene in the public interest as the scam and the concomitant corruption and money laundering of large sums associated with the scam will directly impact the free and fair general assembly elections in MP.
In his complaint letter, Tankha has raised several issues against the chief secretary BP Singh, officials of economic offence wing and the other bureaucrats concerned. He alleged that estimated the value of the scam, in the last 4 years, is Rs 30,000 crore and blamed MP government for not covering the whole tenure of the scam.
The e-tendering scam was busted by the MD of the state electronics development corporation and principal secretary Manish Rastogi on May 5th this year. Tempering was discovered in nine e-tenders. The letter was forwarded to the CS and the CS instructed the EOW to file a case into the matter on May 14. He also instructed the department to take the action into the matter.
Tankha claimed that the state government slept for months and made no effort to register the case, to seize the digital equipment including servers, computers, hard disks, laptops and pen drives among others. EOW started its primary enquiry on June 21, but none the EOW or the state government made any effort to seize the documents and the equipments.
He has raised nine points and has asked the CEC to seek explanation from the CS, as to why the instructions of the CS given on May 14 were not followed ?,Why FIR is not registered ?, why no seizures were not made? why Manish Rastogi, the officer who blew the lid over the scam, was transferred?, Why the EOW is probing only nine cases?, why not the e-tendering from the year 2013?, among others. He also pointed out the extension of the CS for five months and objections made by the state Congress president Kamal Nath on the extensions.