BHOPAL: Economic Offences Wing team visiting Smart City Development Corporation to procure documents returned empty-handed on Thursday. The team had gone to obtain the papers related to the tenders of the Smart City Project, in which allegedly financial and procedural irregularities were committed. EOW has registered a complaint in connection with the matter against officers of Urban Development Department including the former principal secretary Vivek Agarwal and others.
On Thursday, when the team made a visit to the SCDC office, the staff there started leaving the office one by one. One of the officers told the EOW team since their CEO Deepak Singh was in Haryana on election duty they were helpless in providing any papers. The team having no choice returned blank.
Meanwhile, the EOW has speeded up its investigation and served notices to officials. Letters have also been written to various companies in connection with the case. Letters have been sent to a company Entranet Solutions, BSNL, which was one of the bidders in the tender. On failing to get the tender BSNL had filed a complaint alleging manipulation in tender process.
A letter has also been sent to Commercial Tax department, inquiring about the taxes been deposited by the various companies which are related to the case.
A complaint was lodged with the EOW alleging that the then UAD principal secretary Vivek Agarwal manipulating the tender norms had given the tender of Rs 300 crore to HPE. BSNL failed to bag the tender even when it had made a bid of Rs 275 crore.
A tender was floated by the SCDC Bhopal to set up the ‘Master System Integrated for providing a cloud based common data centre and disaster management’ in April 2017.
