I MUST thank Mr Raghav Chandra for confirming some of the facts mentioned in my pieces, and sharing some others with our readers that further strengthen my argument that there is something amiss in the manner the government has handled the MPSIDC over the past several years.
If politicians have used the corporation to further their vested interests, bureaucrats have also not brought any laurels to it either...If Mr Chandra's predecessors mishandled the Inter-Corporate Deposit (ICD) scheme and brought the corporation on the verge of collapse, he has also not fared any better. Particularly, the way he has pushed AKVN, Indore, on the brink is simply amazing.
Mr Chandra has accused me of obfuscating the truth. Here I will show how this charge sticks to him, that too quite nicely. Firstly, he has given unnecessary details perhaps to confuse our readers. The thrust of my second article was that the Bank of Punjab was given a special treatment while settling their bond money on the instructions from the then chief minister Uma Bharti, and Mr Chandra showed extraordinary promptness in helping the bank out.
Should there not be a probe into this case as well, I had asked. Mr Chandra claims that the Bank of Punjab case is actually a matter of repayment of borrowed money. This is also a case of conversion of debt through a debt-swapping mechanism, whereby a high-cost debt at 14.4 per cent was converted into a 6.5 per cent low-cost debt. Really?
{{/usCountry}}Should there not be a probe into this case as well, I had asked. Mr Chandra claims that the Bank of Punjab case is actually a matter of repayment of borrowed money. This is also a case of conversion of debt through a debt-swapping mechanism, whereby a high-cost debt at 14.4 per cent was converted into a 6.5 per cent low-cost debt. Really?
{{/usCountry}}What about the 6.5 per cent rate of interest that AKVN, Indore, has to pay to the Bank of Punjab? Will it not add up to 13 per cent?
Mr Chandra further claims that, “Also, the money for repaying the Bank of Punjab was uniquely brought in by the Bank itself...” Of course, it was a unique way of handling things where an unsecured Bond (Mr Chandra has himself given details how the Bond was not securitised) was turned into a secured loan!
As a result the bank is now threatening to takeover the mortgaged assets of the AKVN and approach the Reserve Bank of India for resolution of the matter. (Please see our Indore correspondent Ramesh Shankar's story on page 2)
Mr Chandra has very conveniently skipped the fact that he secured the loan on the pretext of buying land for the Special Economic Zone (SEZ), and diverted the funds to paying the Bond money. Also, Mr Chandra is silent as to why Rs 16.70 crores were taken from the Bank as a short-term loan while only Rs 16.19 crore were deposited towards the payment of the Bank's Bond money (See Part II, February 11). What happened to Rs 49 lakhs?
Interestingly, the rejoinder of Mr Chandra that we have published today is an abridged version of his rather longish letter. In the original letter, he has mentioned that the settlement with the Bank of Punjab was done on instruction from the CM. But when I requested him to shorten the letter by dropping unnecessary details, he replaced CM with “the government...” Who is obfuscating the truth Mr Chandra?