Case filed against nine officials in irrigation scam

Nagpur: Nine officials and four contractors have been booked, with the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in Nagpur registering two more FIRs against them, accusing them of causing a loss of over Rs 23 crore to the state in a multi-crore scam in the Inter-District Project of Vidarbha Irrigation Development Corporation (VIDC) at Gosikhurd. The officials belong to city-based nodal agency, VIDC. They allegedly inflated tender costs, causing a loss of over Rs 23 crore to the state. ACB officials Sunday night lodged the FIRs with Sadar police station.

In the first case, five VIDC officials, including former executive director Devendra Shirke; the then executive engineer Ramesh Wardhane; retired senior divisional accounts officer Gurudas Mandavkar; then superintendent engineer Sanjay Laxman Kholapurkar; and retired chief engineer Sopan Suryavanshi were booked for favouring a contractor in the Ghodazari branch canal work, which is part of the Gosikhurd project. Executive vice president Shamkant Dharmadhikari and business development head Sunil Shinde (both Hindustan Construction Company) too were accused in the case.

ACB sources said that the five accused illegally increased tender cost by Rs 7.81 crore. “Hindustan Construction Company formed a ring with two more contractors to bag the contract. The deposit to be paid by these two contractors was paid by the company through its own bank account. The five officials gave a mobilisation advance tothe company even though there was no such provision in the tender,” revealed a source.