JOIN USThe Lokayukta police have filed chargesheet against 33 persons, including government officials and contractors, in the multi-crore PWD work scam at Magadi sub-division in Ramanagara district.
The chargesheet has been filed under sections 13 (1) (c), 13 (2), 9 and 11 of Prevention of Corruption Act, Section 23 of Karnataka Transparency Act and under sections 464, 409, 477 (A) and 120 (b) of IPC. The Lokayukta had taken up suo motu note of the newspaper reports about the scam and referred it to Lokayukta police for investigation.
The Lokayukta police investigation has also proved the role of 13 other government officials in the scam and have written to the competent authorities for sanction of prosecution. The chargesheet, which runs into 1.74 lakh pages with 181 volumes of documents, has stated that the State government had released Rs 236.12 crore of total grants for road works in Magadi sub-division during the year 2011-12. The Magadi sub-division officials had allegedly released Rs 137 crore to contractors, out of which Rs 56.72 crore was misused causing loss to State exchequer, the chargesheet stated.
The officials who have been chargesheeted are Executive Engineer Gangadharaiah, Assistant Engineer G K Chandrashekhar, Secretary to Government K B Devaraju and Accounts officer Srinivas. The Lokayukta police have sought PSO (Prosecution Sanction Order) against officials who are still in service.
These officials are: Secretary to the Government Sadashivareddy B Patil, Internal Financial Advisor Govindaraju, Superintending Engineer D Udayashankar, Assistant Executive Engineers A Nataraju, G S Siddalingakumar, S V Srinivas, Assistant Engineers H S Venkatesh, Kantharaju, K R Anandkumar, K C Prabhakar, TV Mukundan, V Krishna and Cash Clerk Puttaswamy. “The officials involved have given newspaper publication about the tenders outside Ramanagara district, mainly in North Karnataka. Through this, officials hatched a conspiracy with select contractors to allot tenders,” a senior police official said.