AP skill development scam: Naidu ignored babus' objections

Hyderabad: The skill development scam in Andhra Pradesh, in which former chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu was arrested, is a classic case of corruption of the Telugu Desam government awarding Rs 370 crore project to a private company on nomination basis without inviting tenders and releasing 90 per cent of the project cost without even evaluating the actual cost of hardware and software supplied by the private company, all in the know of Naidu.

According to the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act, as told by a former Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) chief on condition of anonymity, the investigating agency need not even prove the benefits personally accrued by Naidu in the scam. Establishing his wilful acts benefiting the private company and causing loss to the exchequer is itself sufficient, he added.

The documentary evidence available with Deccan Chronicle established, though in a rare, the involvement, rather the acts of omission and commission, of then chief minister right from inception of the A P Skill Development Corporation to appointment of people loyal to him to head the project on behalf of the government and more importantly arranging free flow of funds to the private company without any checks and balances. He overruled the safeguarding mechanisms suggested by the officials who, like in the case of then finance special chief secretary Dr P.V. Ramesh, clearly put the onus of releasing funds on Naidu in their respective note filings. The government ignored suggestion made by another finance secretary K. Sunitha to first implement a pilot project with limited fund before releasing Rs 370 crore.

The documents also clearly established that the award of the Rs 370 crore project was camouflaged into a "mythical" Rs 3,000 crore charity by German industrial major SIEMENS and ironically the company gave a statement before magistrate that it did not receive any money and is not at all aware of the MoU. Amidst the backdrop of Telugu Desam daring the Chief Minister, Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, to prove misuse of funds and their claims that the skill centres were very much in place catering to the students, the Central agencies Goods and Services Tax (Investigation wing) and Enforcement Directorate prima facie established routing of Rs 241 crore out of Rs 371 crore through fake invoices into shell companies.

"For public consumption, then government brought GO Ms No 4 dt June 30, 2015, in which it clearly stated that out of the total project cost SIEMENS will contribute 90 per cent in the form of grant-in-aid and remaining 10 per cent will be borne by the state,” AP criminal investigation department chief N. Sanjay told the media in Hyderabad on Thursday. But in the MoU there is no mention of the mythical grant-in-aid and it only talked about release of funds from the state government. The MoU was signed by SISC, Designtech which emerged as the kingpin of the scam, and APSDC without the knowledge of German SIEMENS. The GST already established the routing of funds by Designtech to several shell companies.

Though the TD poll ally Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan attempted to project Naidu's innocence asking the CID to show one signature of Naidu on the files, the investigating agency could establish that he signed at least 13 different occasions in the files relating to the project. The CID chief displayed to media the images of Naidu’s signatures in files.

"In fact, it is the Central agency that detected fake invoices and routing through shell companies when Naidu was very much in power. The present government took up the case much later," pointed out Additional Advocate General Ponnavolu Sudhakar Reddy who along with CID chief told the media that enough evidence was gathered by the state and central agencies to establish siphoning of public money by the accused.

To mask the apparent graft, then APSDC managing director L. Premchandra Reddy wrote to the Central Institute of Tool Design to evaluate the project in December 2015. But, Reddy, for reasons best known to him, was too eager to release as much as Rs 337 crore in four phases before the CITD submitted its evaluation report in March 2016. Reference to CITD also appears to be a sham because there was no justification for selecting it for evaluation of at least I-T component for which there are other qualified central agencies. Ironically, the tool design institute evaluated the cost of components like software, preparing students for group discussions and mock interviews etc.,

The electronic evidence gathered by the CID clearly showed that representatives of Designtech met CITD former principal director Shujayat Khan who without any independent exercise merely forwarded the cost estimates furnished to him by the private company employee one Bhavana Gupta and corporation released balance Rs 34 crore also to Designtech. Premchandra Reddy refused to comment on the questionnaire sent to him by this correspondent.