HC reserves orders in tender case against Velumani

CHENNAI: A division bench of Madras High Court on Tuesday reserved orders on a petition filed by former minister and AIADMK leader SP Velumani to quash two FIRs filed for illegally awarding 47 tenders of Chennai and Coimbatore city Corporations during his term as the local administration minister from 2014-2018.

The bench comprising Justice PN Prakash and Justice RMT Teekaa Raman reserved the orders after hearing the arguments of Velumani’s counsel senior advocate SV Raju, complainant Arappor Iyakkam's senior lawyer V Suresh, and State Public Prosecutor Hassan Mohammed Jinnah.

Velumani’s counsel argued that the tenders were awarded properly and his client had no role in the tender awarding process.

Senior counsel Suresh for Arappor submitted that the complaint against Velumani and 16 others was fully supported by documents obtained under the RTI and public sources.

“Documents were presented to DVAC which had clearly shown collusion in the award of tenders to Senthil & Co, owned by Anbarasan, brother of SP Velumani in respect of 47 tenders that were uploaded from the same IP Address, on the same date within the short time from each other. There were only 2 bidders, namely Senthil & Co and Rajan Rathinaswamy. They were registered with Coimbatore Corporation with the same mobile number and submitted the bids from the same IP address,” Arappor submitted through its counsel.

Arappor further informed the court that an eye witness had clearly submitted before the court that R Chandrasekar acted as Velumani’s Benami and he was operated from the Roja Illam- the official residence of the then minister Velumani. The senior lawyer further wanted action against officers who colluded with the former minister.

“DVAC’s R Ponni, IPS, the then investigating officer (IO) of the DVAC had acted in a malafide and partial manner by deliberately disregarding concrete evidence presented by Arappor to the DVAC and submitting a fake report exonerating Velumani,” senior counsel Arappor argued.

State PP submitted that in order to deliberately prevent the participation of small and medium-level companies in the tender, Rs 20 crore was set as the annual income of companies for participating in the tender works. Recording these submissions, the bench reserved orders.