Financial lapses: FIR against 19 engineers of Jal Nigam, UPPCL

LUCKNOW : The UP police’s Economic Offence Wing (EOW) on Monday registered an FIR against 19 engineers and project managers of Jal Nigam and UP Power Corporation Limited (UPPCL) as well as some others for financial irregularities in water work projects in Chitrakoot, said senior EOW officials here on Tuesday.

A senior EOW official said the state government had ordered enquiry in the water work projects in Chitrakoot’s Mau and Bargarh. He said preliminary enquiry suggested that there were major irregularities by Jal Nigam and UP Power Corporation officials as well as a firm and contractor. He said the total cost of the two water projects was worth ₹20.43 crore.

The official said EOW inspector Sujit Kumar Rai had lodged an FIR under IPC sections 409 for criminal breach of trust by public servant, 120-B for criminal conspiracy and 13 (2) of Prevention of Corruption Act. He said those named in the FIR included five superintendent engineers of Jal Nigam’s construction unit, namely RK Bajpai, AK Singh, RK Tripathi, Girish Chandra and MC Srivastava, four superintendent engineers of Jal Nigam’s mechanical unit, namely AK Awasthi, OP Pandey, PN Srivastava and SP Singh, three project managers Vinay Pal Singh, Asharam Arya and Ram Bihari and two assistant engineers of the construction unit AK Bhartiya and BB Niranjan.

He said the list included an executive engineer JP Singh and two assistant engineers Yashveer Singh and DK Singh of the mechanical unit, as well as Ankur Yadav and Raj Mani Vishwakarma, executive engineers of UP Power Corporation Limited. Besides, the private firm Jindal Water Infrastructure Ltd’s chief executive officer Rishab Shetty, managing director Gyan Bansal and contractor Narendra Kumar Gupta were also made accused in the FIR, he added.

The official said the EOW was further investigating the matter after registering the regular FIR and was likely to arrest some people.