‘Tainted’ babus rewarded: TD

Top officials who resorted to irregularities in awarding Singareni Collieries “Long Wall project” contract to private firms in 2011 have been rewarded with plum posts in the TRS government, alleged TS TD MLA A. Revanth Reddy in the Legislative Assembly on Thursday.

Participating in the debate on Singareni Collieries in the House, Mr Reddy said that the then CMD of Singareni Collieries, S. Narsing Rao and IAS officer K. Ramakrishna Rao, indulged in irregularities to award the contract to a joint venture comprising Indu Projects Ltd and a European firm, Bucyrus.

“Though both the companies lacked experienced to take up such a huge project worth over `600 crore, Narsing Rao and Ramakrishna Rao, who was CEO of Indu Projects Ltd in 2011, ensured the contract was awarded to this JV and even released `50 crore towards mobilisation advance. The project failed to take off even after five years. As per norms, this amount has to be recovered. But no action has been taken. The state government, instead of initiating action against the officials, rewarded them with plum posts by making Narsing Rao principal secretary in the CMO and K. Ramakrishna Rao finance secretary,” Mr Reddy alleged.

Responding, the CM admitted that some irregularities took place in awarding of contracts and a probe is on.

“Not only this there are complaints against others contracts also. In this contract, the company recovered the amount. There is no issue now,” the CM said.