Lucknow: CBI has raided 7 more locations in the Gomti River Front scam that took place during the Samajwadi Party regime in UP. The house of contractor Harpal Singh Chaudhary, resident of Ashok Vatika located in Prabhat Nagar in Meerut was also searched. Harpal Singh Chaudhary, retired from the Irrigation Department, is a relative of an IAS. Harpal Singh had planted saplings in a part of Gomti River Front. Documents found during raids at total 49 places are being studied. The flame of investigation can reach many elders. CBI officials suspect that all this was not just for the engineers. If the investigation progresses, its heat can reach the former minister and IAS officers.
On Monday, the CBI had raided 42 locations in UP, Rajasthan and Kolkata. During this, information about the other locations of some of the accused also came to light and the CBI also investigated till late night at seven other places. These raids were conducted by forming teams of officers of CBI Ghaziabad, Dehradun, Bihar and Delhi along with CBI Lucknow. CBI has also got an FD of Rs 1 crore from the house of a then Chief Engineer. Apart from this, valuable diamonds and gold jewelery were also found in the house of many officers and firm operators, the details of which have been recorded. The CBI has not seized the jewellery.
The firm which got the job it wanted: It has already come to the fore in the CBI investigation that the then Superintending Engineer of the nominated accused Irrigation Department Roop Singh Yadav, Shivmangal Yadav, Jeevan Ram Yadav, Akhil Raman, the then Chief Engineer Om Verma, Kazim Ali , SN Sharma and other officers got the work done by the firm they wanted. The chairman of the committee formed for the allocation of works gave the work to whomever he wanted and on his approval other members of the committee agreed. Two bogus firms were also involved in the works for which the paperwork of tender was completed. Fake newspapers were printed for information of 30 to 35 tenders. It is not coming out of the throat of CBI officers that such a big game engineer kept doing it from his level and the elders of the department did not even know about it. When the Gomtinagar River Front project was started, then Irrigation Minister Shivpal Yadav and Principal Secretary Irrigation Deepak Singhal were there.
Scam in works worth 407 crores: During the SP regime, a scam has been caught in the works of about Rs 407 crores related to the Gomti Riverfront project worth Rs 1500 crores. The Anti-Corruption Branch of CBI, Lucknow, after preliminary investigation of 661 works worth Rs 407 crore, had registered its second FIR on July 2 against a total of 189 accused, including 16 then officers and employees of the Irrigation Department.
The influence of the firm operators will also be searched: In the first phase, the CBI on Monday raided the houses of those firm operators, who were allotted works worth Rs 15 to 20 crore or more. Efforts are being made to estimate the commission from the recovered documents. It is also being seen that which work was allotted at what high rate. The clout of the operators of the firms getting the work will also be investigated.
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