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Officials of Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd and National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) will face legal action from the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) for allegedly involved in accepting bribe from California based companies to award them big contracts for power projects.

V Ramachandran, Chief Technical Examiner of CVC said that necessary legal action against officials of BHEL and NTPC for the alleged irregulatires in projects involving a cost of between Rs. 3000 – Rs. 4000 crores.

Delivering his key note address at ASSOCHAM organised ‘International Summit on Government Procurement – Enhancing Transparency, Efficiency and Accountability on Thursday, Ramachandran clarified that the proposed legal action would be possible after Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has referred this particular case to CVC.

"Generally, such projects are worth between Rs. 3000 crores – Rs. 4000 crores and in the past cases of this nature were referred to Central Vigilance Commission and we expect that the reported case of US companies, bribing PSUs (Public Sector Undertakings) to bag big contacts would also be sent to us for necessary action. Once the allegation as regards to acceptance of bribery is proved, the commission will recommend legal action against officials of NTPC and BHEL”, categorically stated Ramachandran at ASSOCHAM conference when one of it’s members raised the issue of US companies bribing PSUs to bag big contacts in infrastructure sector.

In an another significant announcement, Ramchandran ruled out possibilities of review of existing tendering policies for government procurement, clarifying that the on-going L1 system cannot be reviewed as it provides for a fair amount of transparency, efficiency and accountability. He, however, indicated that on case-to-case basis this can be done but as a policy the on-going tendering policy cannot be reviewed.

Ramchandran further clarified that a few years ago the CVC issued guidelines to give opportunities to L2 bidders for participation in bidding process, in case the L1 bidder has bagged out. The guidelines were utterly misused by other bidders and CVC received a number of complaints and thereafter withdrew the guidelines. Therefore, it will not be possible for the commission to further review the bidding process as it could be mis-used once more, clarified Ramchandran.

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