For allegedly favouring private firm Bhadra International
New Delhi, Sept. 17:
The Civil Aviation Ministry has ordered the immediate suspension and initiation of major penalty against six senior officers of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) for allegedly favouring a private firm while awarding ground-handling contracts.
The action follows a Central Bureau of Investigation probe that found the officers involved in committing irregularities and favouring Bhadra International India Ltd (BIIL) in the award of contracts for ground-handling services at certain airports, including Chennai and Kolkata, a statement issued by the Ministry said.
The CBI also found grave and serious irregularities in award of contracts for ground-handling services for Thiruvananthapuram, Coimbatore, Kozhikode, Mangalore and Tiruchi airports.
The CBI probe on Chennai and Kolkata airports found that these officers had made certain deviations from the commercial manual in the notice inviting tender (NIT). The deviation, in particular, included deliberate incorporation of the term “tie-up” arrangement in the eligibility criteria, as stipulated in the NIT to make BIIL eligible in joint venture technical agreement with Novia International Consulting (NIC) APS for participating in the bid process, the statement adds.
Besides, the experience and turnover of the lead company was to be taken into account. In this case, the lead company is BIIL, which is doing the ground-handling work, while the turnover and experience of NIC were counted, the Ministry said.
In addition, neither of the two companies had the minimum experience of five years in ground-handling, as required in the tender conditions.
The officers who suspended are L.L. Krishnan, Executive Director (Commercial); R.L. Saran, DGM (Finance); S. Basu, Additional GM (Commercial); Arun Mehan, DGM (Operations); P.K. Chadha, DGM (Operations); and Ravi Verma, GM.
The statement further adds that the compliance report on its directions should be positively done by the end of this month.
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