Mumbai: 8 Central Railway officials booked by CBI in tendering fraud case

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a criminal offence against eight officials of Central Railways posted at the Vidyavihar Stores Depot and Kurla Car Shed for having allegedly entered into a criminal conspiracy with the suppliers of replaceable stores/parts and abuse their official positions to purchase the stores/parts at higher costs, for the illegal monetary benefit of the private firms/companies. The accused officials have been booked on charges of alleged abuse of official position, criminal conspiracy, forgery, cheating, criminal breach of trust.

According to the CBI, information received by the CBI revealed that in the matter of tendering process for procurement of various parts/items to be used for the maintenance of EMU rakes (local train rakes) at Vidyavihar Stores Depot and Kurla Car Shed, ambiguous description of items for non-stock purchase under Limited Tender Category were made.

"The descriptions of the items were kept in such a manner so that it should not be procured from GeM (Government e-Market) portal and may not be understood by other suppliers, except some set of suppliers who were involved in the conspiracy. The tenders were allotted to the set of suppliers only and most of the items which are locally made, procured on exorbitant rates, which show the nexus between Central Railway officials and the suppliers the same. The information further reveals that the purchase orders against most of the tenders opened at Vidyavihar Store Depot have been awarded to the same set of firms during 3 financial years - 2017-18, 18-19 and 19-20," said a CBI official.

"It is also revealed that most of the Purchase Orders were intentionally kept below Rs 2.5 lakhs to bring down the competency to Senior Divisional Electrical Engineer level approval and it was intentionally done to avoid account vetting. That the internal enquiry by the Vigilance department of Central Railway, CSMT also revealed that items had been purchased on 8-15 times higher rates than other Division/Railway and also all the tenders have been floated as Limited Tenders and Time Of Delivery has been kept deliberately 2-3 days only against the guidelines issued for 7 days. That the officials who were involved in the tendering and its acceptance process, with malafide intentions of suspected pecuniary advantage, favoured various firms by allotting tenders and accepting the poor quality of materials on higher rates. In doing so they caused wrongful gain to the suppliers and corresponding loss to Central Railways," the official said.

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