The Steel and Industrial Forgings Limited (SIFL), Thrissur, has recorded a steep fall, by about 50 percentage, in its order book for deals in 2012 compared to previous years.
Sensing a huge misappropriation of funds, the authorities are all set to launch an internal probe.
Top officials suspect that SIFL officials had been purposely quoting tenders at higher rates to help rival companies make lower bid and bag the tenders.
According to SIFL Chairman K S Hamsa, the order book has recorded a steep fall by 50 percentage in 2012 compared to 2011 and 2010. “It points the finger at possible norms violation and corruption in quoting several tenders. The company even failed to get profitable orders from the public sector and defence organisations which were once our regular customers. We suspect that our officials were wrongly quoting tenders to help competitors,” Hamsa says.
Meanwhile, another SIFL official reveals that some officials had deliberately quoted higher price in the tender called by ordnance factories for flanges of battle tanks of the Indian Army, which in turn invited a CBI probe.
“We have been receiving tenders from these defence companies for several years. The officers of the company knew that the lowest bid for flanges would be in the range of `7000 to `10,000. However, we quoted `13,500. We were the third lowest bidders in the tendering process. Later the tender allotted to the lowest bidders was cancelled and given to our company and the AMW in Mysore. The company had to pay 12 percentage commission to the nominee, Subi Mally, for this deal. In normal deals, we appoint nominees for a commission rate of 2-3 percentage. But in this case, the commission was very high,” he says.