Disclose HUDCO scam report: CIC

The Right to Information Act may help to unveil the mystery behind the Central Vigilance Commission proposing and the CBI disposing in the Rs1,300-crore HUDCO scam.

Updated on: May 7, 2011, 23:35:00 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Right to Information Act may help to unveil the mystery behind the Central Vigilance Commission proposing and the CBI disposing in the Rs1,300-crore HUDCO scam.

The Central Information Commission this week directed the CBI to provide the inquiry report on closing investigation in four cases where the CVC found "adequate evidence of paying bribes" to mobilise funds from Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO) in 2006.

The CBI had closed the case saying there was not enough evidence to proceed with the probe. This had resulted in the housing and urban development ministry submitting a closure report in Supreme Court in 2007. The corporation had invested Rs950 crore in West Bengal Infrastructure Development Finance, Rs200 crore in Himachal Pradesh

Infrastructure Development Board and Rs150 crore in Vidharbha Irrigation Development Corporation. There were allegations that money was paid to get these funds from HUDCO.

“It appears that CVC found clear evidence showing bribes were taken. However, the CBI and the (Housing and Urban Development) ministry have come to the conclusion there is no wrong doing. If corruption is to be curtailed.... citizens need to get information of this nature," Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi said.

The CBI's information officer Pradeep Kumar had refused to provide information to RTI applicant AN Gupta on the ground that the probe report was confidential. The investigations were closed in 2007 and the SC was informed about it.

Gandhi said the information officer had wrongly applied the exemption clauses and said "mere fears without any justification" could not be grounds for denying the citizen's fundamental right. The commission also said the Kumar had failed to justify the reasons for denying information as stipulated under the RTI Act.

The scam

HUDCO had sanctioned R14,500 crore as loans to different infrastructure corporations during the NDA regime.

Three part-time HUDCO directors had allegedly sanctioned loans amounting to Rs5,300 crore to corporate houses in a day in the absence of a single permanent director

CVC found that bribe was paid get the loans sanctioned

The CBI was asked to investigate which did not find adequate evidence to proceed against the accused.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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