New
Delhi, March 26: The Army Chief General VK Singh’s latest salvo of
bribery allegations on Monday left the government in a fix and a
cornered Defence Minister AK Antony announced a CBI probe into the
episode that took place more than two years ago.
As
the Parliament went into a pandemonium in the aftermath of the stunning
revelations made by General Singh, a visibly agitated Antony said an
“action has been already been taken”. Indicating that things are going
to get murkier, the Army Chief has said that more things will be
revealed in the coming days and the “sutradhar” (the stage manger) of
the malicious campaign against him will also be exposed soon.
However,
the Army Chief stopped short of naming the retired officer but senior
officers point out that he was referring to former Director General of
Defence Intelligence Agency Lt Gen (retd) Tejinder Singh, whom the Army
Headquarters had named in a press release for offering bribe and
spearheading a malicious complaint against the force.
The
General has alleged that a retired Army officer had offered him bribe
on behalf of a foreign company, the Army Chief in his latest media
interview has said that he was offered the illegal gratification of Rs.
14 crore to clear a file related to a purchase of 600 sub-standard
heavy-duty vehicles for the Army.
“Just
imagine one of these men had the gumption to walk up to me and tell me
that if I cleared the tranche, he would give me Rs 14 crore. He was
offering a bribe to me to the army chief,” General Singh said while
adding that people before him taken money and they will take money after
him as well.
General Singh said
that Antony was promptly apprised of the issue and the defence minister
had “banged his head”. However, senior defence ministry officials said
on condition of anonymity that the Army Chief had not taken up any
formal and written complaint against the retired officer or against the
foreign firm in question.
The initial allegations in this regard were made by the Army Headquarter in the issue had come on March 5th. The
Army Headquarter statement had read: “The present story (about Army
trying to eavesdrop on telephonic conversation of politicians and
bureaucrats in Delhi) has been put out by Lt Gen (retd) Tejinder Singh,
who was the Ex DGDIA and who has been earlier questioned on the purchase
of the ‘Of the air Monitoring System’, without sanction by the
technically empowered committee.” The statement further added, “This
officer has also been an allottee in Adarsh Housing Society in Mumbai
and has also offered bribe on behalf of Tatra and Vectra Limited, which
supplies vehicles to BEML.”
The
Defence Ministry also punched holes in the Army Chief calling the
vehicles sub-standard. Joint Secretary Rashmi Verma with the Defence
Ministry said: “There have been no quality complaints so far. They
(Tatra truck) are trucks of their own kind with flexible axel and can be
plied in desert and all kind of terrains.”
The
Indian Army had begun inducting these trucks in 1986 from a
Czechoslovakia company Omni Pol and presently has 7,000 trucks in its
fleet. With no makers of such vehicles in the country, the force has
acquired the platforms without any competitive bidding. The vehicles
have been constructed by the public sector undertaking Bharat Earth
Movers Ltd under license. Presently competitive tendering is on for the
vehicles as the Army has changed its requirements.
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