Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Government orders CBI probe after Army Chief’s bribe bomb

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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