CHANDIGARH: The Punjab Vigilance Bureau has arrested KD Chaudhry, the former Chairman-cum-Managing Director of the Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL), along with the senior executive of the corporation, Sanjeev Prabhakar, and Ludhiana-based builder Amit Garg.
Vigilance inquiry found that they had connived and installed a 66 KV sub-station by using Rs 10 crore of government funds in the private housing colony, Basant City in Ludhiana, against the rules a decade back.
The arrests were made by the Economic Offences Wing of the Vigilance Bureau in Ludhiana as a case emerged from a vigilance inquiry dated May 10, 2021, following which a First Information Report (FIR) was registered this year.
This is a case linked to alleged financial loss caused to PSPCL during the installation of the 66 KV Basant Avenue substation in 2014-15.
Prabhakar retired as the deputy chief engineer from the department a few years ago and Chaudhry retired in 2017.
Prabhakar, the then SDO, and Chaudhry, the then CMD of the PSPCL, had allegedly bypassed the rules and installed the sub-station by spending money from the department funds.
According to the rules, the builder himself had to install that. The connivance of the PSPCL officials with the builder was established during the vigilance probe, said sources.
Sources claimed that the installation of the substation had cost nearly Rs 10 crore and alleged that the expenditure was incurred by PSPCL despite the infrastructure primarily benefiting the private colony.
It is further alleged that if the electricity load of interconnected colonies developed by the same coloniser had been assessed collectively and proper verification of no-objection certificates (NOCs) carried out, the entire expenditure for the substation could have been recovered from the builder.
Officials also alleged that guidelines issued by the Ministry of Power regarding the installation of substations were not properly followed.
An official spokesperson of the Vigilance Bureau said the coloniser of Basant Avenue, allegedly in collusion with concerned PSPCL field officers, got the 66 KV substation installed inside the private colony at government expense instead of bearing the cost himself, as required under applicable norms and electricity guidelines.
Punjab State Electricity Board Engineers Association has backed Chaudhary, Ajay Pal Singh Atwal, General Secretary of the association said that they did not know much about the case, which is a decade old but are concerned about the age of Chaudhary, who is now around 75-years.
Chaudhary was the first CMD of PSPCL during SAD-BJP Government and had resigned in March 2017 after Congress Government came to power in Punjab.