Shashank Shekhar
Dhanbad ( Jharkhand) : Ministry of coal has directed central vigilance commissioner (CVC), Coal India Limited (CIL), to lodge an FIR against 4 senior officer of Eastern Coal limited (ECL) holding them responsible for delay in opening of tender for awarding contract to run Chirakuri power plant based at Dhanbad which is under ECL generating huge revnue to the company .
On the other hand, 7 other officers including a former CMD of ECL C K Dey, A M Marathe (present finance director of CIL), K.S Patro (personal director CIL) besides 4 general managers of CIL: N Mitra, Utpal Chakravarty, T K Datta and P K Datta, have been indicted in this connection.
As per the order sent by by Coal ministry under secretary Alka Shekhar, the senior officers against whom FIR is likely to be lodged are : G D Jha (retired CGM of CIL), besides three general managers of CIL namely S Chowdhry, M Mitra and B N Das.
It may be mentioned here that the ECL awarded contract to Messer IPCL company to run Chirakuri power plant in 1991 on rental basis on Rs 30 lakh per month for 20 years and later in 2011 it got an extension of one year till 2012. But, later the tender process got delayed by almost 18 months and fresh tenders were invited in 2014.
The delay caused huge loss running into several crore to ECL after which Central Vigilance Commissioner, CIL, started investigation into the matter and found the aforesaid officers responsible for the lapse and sent his report to coal ministry for further action. The order of the union Under Secretary reached Dhanbad on April 4, 2018.