Arappor asks TN govt to probe its complaint instead of dismissing it
In the statement on Sunday, he said the government should take appropriate criminal and departmental actions on their complaint. "Moreover, the cartelisation of the contractors should be done away with to ensure a transparent tendering process, " it said.
Arappor Iyakkam convenor Jayaram Venkatesan
CHENNAI: Arappor Iyakkam, an anti-corruption organisation, has demanded the state government probe Tangedco's transformer scam to punish the culprits instead of dismissing its expose.
"A better way of good governance would be to hold a proper and independent investigation and punish those who have committed corruption when irregularities and corruptions come to light, rather than ignoring corruption as if mistakes and corruption will never happen in our (DMK) government, " Arappor Iyakkam convenor Jayaram Venkatesan said reacting to the state government response to their corruption charges in the transformers procurement.
On Thursday, Jayaram Venkatesan alleged that the tenders floated for transformers with capacity ranging from 25kVA to 500kVA during the years 2021, 2022 and 2023 have led to unjust enrichment of bidders and loss to the exchequer to the tune of Rs 397 crores.
In the statement on Sunday, he said the government should take appropriate criminal and departmental actions on their complaint. "Moreover, the cartelisation of the contractors should be done away with to ensure a transparent tendering process, " it said.
On the government's claims of multiple contractors have quoted same price for transformers since 2011, he said that in the last two years, all the contractors are quoting the same price and it is nothing but cartel or syndicate formation. "Even in the last regime tenders, in many contracts, all the contractors did not quote the same price. Mainly we can see that in many tenders the lowest bidder is not in collusion, " he said.
To the state government's claim that Arappor had compared the prices of aluminium wound transformers, Jayaram said that they compared copper wound transformers with similar specifications brought by Rajasthan with Tangedco. Tangedco brought 250 KVA copper wound transformers for Rs 7.29 lakh in November 2021 while Rajasthan brought a higher capacity 315 KVA copper wound transformer for 5.48 lakh in the same month, he noted.
The loss estimate was done on a conservative basis and real loss would be much more, he noted.
