FIR against UPRNN officers
By Arun Pratap Singh
Dehradun, 24 Feb: While a huge scam of over Rs 130 crores related to Uttar Pradesh Rajkiya Nirman Nigam (UPRNN) has brought to light the controversies surrounding this agency, once again, sources in various departments claim that UPRNN has been involved in serious controversies in Uttarakhand for long.
The latest such incident is registration of an FIR against UPRNN officials, many of whom have retired and involve charges of embezzlement of an amount of Rs 137 crores.
It is ironic that despite being an agency from Uttar Pradesh, It has been a preferred over the state’s own executive agencies like PWD, the Irrigation Department’s Construction Division, the Construction Division of Uttarakhand’s Peyjal Nigam, Rural Engineering Services, Uttarakhand State Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd (USIDCL) and Uttarakhand Housing & Urban Development Authority (UHUDA).
Sources claim that construction of buildings of various departments is often deliberately handed over to UPRNN without tenders in preference to the state’s own agencies as it has also been empanelled as government agency at the behest of the ministers and bureaucrats alike. This is despite the fact that being an agency from another state, the government has to incur an additional centage of 12 percent. It remains a mystery why the ministers concerned and the bureaucrats as well as lower-level officers posted in the Secretariat prefer this agency even when there have been innumerable complaints regarding poor quality work done by UPRNN. Sources also claim that not only the departments, often the Vice Chancellors of the State Government Universities have preferred construction by UPRNN. They also point out that there are cases where the Bharsar located State Forestry and Horticulture University had assigned construction of buildings in its Research Centre at Selaqui to USIDCL but soon the construction contract was taken back from USIDCL and given to UPRNN by the government on the written request of the then Vice Chancellor in 2014 and it is alleged that the then Agriculture Minister had also a keen interest in handing in the construction of the university buildings to UPRNN. It is alleged that the agency has made “significant” efforts to keep the ministers and the bureaucrats happy in order to gain construction contracts while the claims of other agencies have often been ignored to the extent that they have found it difficult to pay salaries to their staff on a regular basis.
UPRNN has bene embroiled in various controversies since the year 2012 when it made an entry in Uttarakhand. The latest scam, amounting to Rs 137 crore, has allegedly been committed by the then Project Manager, Project General Manager, and Assistant Accountant in various construction works across the state.
The investigation into the scam, which occurred between 2012 and 2018, commenced in 2019. Upon completion of a detailed departmental investigation, financial irregularities and embezzlement have been confirmed. Consequently, six cases related to the scam have been registered at Nehru Colony police station on the complaint of Sunil Kumar Malik, Additional Project Manager of Uttar Pradesh State Construction Corporation Unit-1. Five officials have been accused in these cases.
This scam is of an entirely different nature and it involves internal corruption and embezzlement. According to the FIR, between 2012 and 2018, the Uttarakhand government awarded projects worth thousands of crores of rupees to the UPRNN. These projects included the construction of buildings for 15 Government Industrial Training Institutes in the Skill Development and Employment Department, Disaster Relief Centres, Tourism Department constructions, OPD Block of Doon Medical College Dehradun, streetlights (backup energy project) under Integrated Industrial Estate facilities, and other works. In these construction works carried out over approximately six years, the corporation’s officers, in connivance with the accounting officer, committed a scam amounting to crores of rupees.
The former officers accused in these cases are Shiv Asare Sharma, then Project Manager (Retired), resident of Thekma, Azamgarh, UP; Pradeep Kumar Sharma, then Project Manager (Retired), resident of Jaidev Park, East Punjabi Bagh, New Delhi; Virendra Kumar, Assistant Accounts Officer (Dismissed), resident of Khedi Bhojpur, Najibabad, District Bijnor, UP; Ram Prakash Gupta, Assistant Accounts Officer (Retired), resident of Mohalla Barauni, District Hardoi, UP and Satish Kumar Upadhyay, Resident Engineer (Retired), resident of Sariyanwa, Prayagraj, UP. All the cases are from before 2018-19. After the detailed departmental investigation, financial irregularities and embezzlement were confirmed, leading to the registration of six cases at Nehru Colony police station, in which five former officers have been accused.
Ajai Singh, SSP, Dehradun, confirmed the embezzlement through departmental investigation. He stated that the then officers of the corporation looted funds arbitrarily in the name of construction works. The mastermind of the scam, former General Manager Shiv Asare Sharma, along with other accused, spent more than the allocated amount, misappropriated funds for different works, and paid crores of rupees for a project without acquiring land.
