Lokayukta police submit final report on UB project

The Lokayukta police on Tuesday submitted the final report on the re-investigation of irregularities in awarding a contract for the Upper Bhadra Project.

The Lokayukta Court had earlier rejected the ‘B’ report submitted by the police absolving former chief minister B S Yeddyurappa of any wrongdoing in awarding contracts for construction works in the Upper Bhadra Project.

Investigating officer DySP Girish S submitted documents pertaining to the transactions of the four companies- Dhavalagiri Properties, Sahyadri Healthcare and Diagnostics Private Limited, Sagar Health Care and Diagnostics and Murudeshwara Power Corporation Limited, a subsidiary of RNS Infrastructure- which allegedly made payments amounting to Rs 16 crore to both Dhavalagiri and Sahyadri.

Documents pertaining to blacklisting of the company Jyothi Infrastructure, awarding of tender and legal partition of Yeddyurappa from his sons, were also submitted.

However, no fresh report has been submitted on any further investigations into the allegations of awarding of the tender to a joint venture of  RNS Infrastructure and Jyothi Ltd. The matter has been adjourned to August 18.

The private complaint was filed by JD(S) leader Y S V Datta about irregularities in awarding the contract to RNS-Jyothi to execute the project, even though the price quoted by them was on the higher side.

Datta had alleged that Yeddyurappa awarded the contract to RNS-Jyothi on September 30, 2008, in an arbitrary manner, as the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited and an expert committee had opined that both the bidders were not technically qualified to execute the project.

Murudeshwara Power Corporation Limited subsequently made two payments to two companies — Rs 6 crore to Sahyadri Health Care and Diagnostic Pvt Ltd and Rs 10 crore to Dhavalagiri Properties Developers Pvt Ltd.

Later, Murudeshwara signed an MoU with Dhavalagiri for obtaining a portion of 69 acres of land near Shimoga.