Soil health testing scam: UP Govt suspends 9 officials, blacklists 4 firms after probe reveals anomalies
The state government has suspended nine senior officials of agriculture department and blacklisted four private companies which allegedly bagged contracts for testing of soil health through cartelisation and forged tender documents related to work experience.
The state government has suspended nine senior officials of agriculture department and blacklisted four private companies which allegedly bagged contracts for testing of soil health through cartelisation and forged tender documents related to work experience.
Addressing media persons here on Wednesday, agriculture minister Surya Pratap Shahi said a departmental inquiry had been set up against all the suspended officials and four companies that got the contracts fraudulently had been blacklisted.
The suspended officials had chaired the tender committees in districts or divisions and extended favours to the firms concerned.
“Payments made to the blacklisted firms for conducting soil health tests in 2017-18 and 2018-19 (about ₹20 crore) will also be recovered from them,” he said.
“As the accuracy and authenticity of tests of 50,000 samples of soil by these companies has now come under a cloud, an FIR will also be registered against them,” he added.
The government had received complaints against the firms after which an inquiry was ordered into the alleged scam.
The government has also asked the agriculture department to invite fresh bids for soil heath testing, cancelling the earlier ones.
The suspended officials include joint director, research and soil (headquarters), Pankaj Tripathi, deputy director (Bareilly) Vinod Kumar Singh, deputy director (Moradabad) Ashok Kumar, joint director (Aligarh) Jogendra Singh Rathore, deputy director (Saharanpur) Rajiv Kumar, deputy director (soil test), Aligarh, Shridev Sharma, joint director (Jhansi) Ram Pratap, assistant director (soil test), Meerut, Suresh Chandra Chaudhary, and deputy director (soil test), Bareilly, Sanjiv Kumar.
These officers were responsible for finalising tenders awarded to private firms.
Shahi said the action was taken after agriculture production commissioner Prabhat Kumar conducted an inquiry into the matter in September.
“It was found during the probe that private firms hatched a criminal conspiracy with senior officials to procure soil testing contracts through forged documents,” he said.
Launched in February 2015, the soil health card scheme aims at helping the farmers increase their farm productivity.
Under this programme, farmers are provided soil health cards carrying crop-wise recommendations for nutrients and fertilisers required for individual farms on the basis of soil health tests conducted and analysed by experts at various testing labs.