Chennai: The Madras High Court today directed the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption to provide reply on filing case against Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaninswami and Revenue Minister R B Udhayakumar in connection with awarding telecom tenders.
When a plea filed by DMK MP RS Bharathi came up for hearing, the HC sought reply from the DVAC. Meanwhile, the High Court also wanted to know why the government was so keen to cancel bail granted to Bharathi and posted a plea in this regard to 19 June.
Bharathi had filed a plea in the Madras High Court alleging huge corruption in award of government tenders to private companies for laying fibre optic cables in 12,524 villages in Tamilnadu.
In his plea, Bharathi sought for registration of a First Information Report on his complaint against Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami and Revenue, Disaster Management and Information Technology Minister R B Udhayakumar.
Bharathi said in his petition the Union government had conceived a project titled BharatNet to bridge the digital divide between urban and rural localities and provide broadband connectivity to all village panchayats in the country.
Under the project, it was envisaged to provide connectivity to 12,524 village panchayats in Tamilnadu. The Chief Minister informed the Assembly that the project would be implemented through Tamilnadu FibreNet (TANFINET) Corporation, a special purpose vehicle.
Stating that tenders were floated for four different packages — A, B, C and D worth Rs 350 crore, Rs 550 crore, Rs 550 crore and Rs 500 crore respectively, he alleged that two private firms began taking utmost efforts to get the project in Tamilnadu through undue influence and by tweaking the tender conditions.