Defence Scam Hits india

[LRE]

By Iftikhar Gilani

NEW DELHI: A Rs 60 billion worth defence scam has hit Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government soon after it started second stint in power.

Defence Ministry officials here say they have already blacklisted the companies involved in malpractices, which included Israeli Military Industries, Singapore Technology and Poland’s BVT and HVT engineering besides two Indian subsidiaries.

Dissipated after its defeat, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday came out of closet accusing a mole in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) involved in the defence artillery purchase scam. The scam was unearthed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) last month.

Who is this mole? BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad preferred not to identify him by name but described him as “a very, very senior civil servant” and claimed Ramesh Nambiar, a middleman arrested in the scam, was close to him to enjoy a free access in the PMO.

The unnamed official happens to be TKA Nair, the principal secretary to the PM who got a year’s extension from Manmohan Singh only last week.

A retired Punjab cadre IAS officer of 1963 batch, he was the first aide Manmohan Singh had picked up in 2004 after taking the reins in May. The Malayali (Keralite) Nair is credited with systematically putting a host of Malayali bureaucrats in the most key positions at the Centre.

Ramesh Nambiar, a Malayali go-getter in his forties, was a frequent visitor to the PMO because of his coveted position in the inner circle of Nair. He used this connection to get an access to all top Malayali bureaucrats in the capital, entertaining them at parties he threw to show off his clout. A former private secretary to Suresh Kalmadi in the PV Narasimha Rao Ministry, Nambiar’s official position is an out-of-turn promoted additional general manager of the state-owned Air India.

He was sacked from the Commonwealth Games management panel, a position he gained courtesy Kalmadi, a Congress MP from Pune, after the CBI raided his Mumbai flat and recovered Rs 2.3 million in connection with the probe into the defence scam. He used to maintain residences in both Mumbai and Delhi.

He is charged with allegedly helping Kolkata-based Ordnance Factory Board’s former Director-General Sudipta Ghosh, who retired in April, open a bank account in Singapore to stash away the illegal gratification received in the defence deals.

At a press conference convened here to raise an accusing finger at the prime minister, BJP spokesman Prasad wanted him to personally clarify the linkage of this Nambiar with the PMO. He also sought a “time-bound and transparent probe” into the defence scam as it concerns security of the country.

“Nambiar was not senior enough in Air India to even get an appointment with the Civil Aviation secretary and hence the PM should explain in what capacity and for what purpose he was able to make frequent trips to the PMO,” Prasad asked, pointing out that even the last two, three Air India chairmen and managing directors always used to take him along while visiting the PMO.

The BJP leader said that entry to the PMO is governed by a “so much” protocol that even MPs have to seek prior appointments and a separate entry is made even in case of the ministers arriving to attend the cabinet meetings.

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