State to inquire into forged defence ministry’s letters submitted by Pune firm

Mumbai: An inquiry has been ordered into submission of forged letters purportedly from the defence ministry by a Pune-based firm to bag publicity and event management contracts of the Maharashtra government

Mumbai: An inquiry has been ordered into submission of forged letters purportedly from the defence ministry by a Pune-based firm to bag publicity and event management contracts of the Maharashtra government.

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The information and publicity department of the state government has ordered an inquiry into Acintya Solutions Private Limited, which has allegedly submitted forged documents related to their experience in the field while applying for the empanelment.

The agency is alleged to have forged the work orders issued by the defence ministry by replacing the original name of the agency. Acintya is one of the 211 agencies that have applied for the empanelment as the government agencies to handle publicity.

The agency forged a job work order issued by the chief construction engineer, ministry of defence, in June 2020. The original order was issued to Parnika Commercial & Estates Pvt Ltd, Delhi as per the records on the central government website.

A complaint against the agency over the submission of forged documents was made to the state government last month and documents were attached as proof.

Brijesh Singh, principal secretary of information and public relations, has ordered an inquiry into it. HT has a copy of the order dated June 30.

“An inquiry should be conducted into the complaint related to fake documents submitted by the agency. The documents concerned have be attached along. Kindly conduct an inquiry and submit a report to this office,” reads the letter written to the director general of information and public relations (DGIPR) states. Singh is also the principal secretary to the chief minister.

“The empanelment process has yet to be completed and if we find any irregularities during the scrutiny, we will take appropriate action. The process is initiated by taking the documents at their face value believing them to be genuine,” said Singh.

Amol Patil, director, Acintya Solutions Private Limited said, “We never submit any forged documents, but if the DGIPR has initiated a probe, we will look into the documents submitted by us. Sometimes, the government issues orders to two different agencies with the same number and this may be such a case.”

In the past, Acintya has bagged a few contracts from the state government worth crores of rupees. The work orders received by the agency include a ₹2.79 crore project from Maharashtra state rural livelihood mission in 2020, a ₹1.92 crore contact by directorate of information technology in January 2020, a ₹2.75 crore contract by Maharashtra state innovation society in July 2022 among others.

“Not only the documents from the defence ministry, but also documents of work orders from the Madhya Pradesh and Goa governments are forged while submitting to the DGIPR for the empanelment,” said a former DGIPR ofiicial.

“The state government has an agency appointed to verify the documents and other processes by charging ₹10,800 from each applicant. It is surprising that the application with forged documents is under consideration and no action has been taken,” added the former official.