DUMKA: Days after a cash haul of over Rs 35 crore, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday summoned former secretary of the Jharkhand rural development department, Manish Ranjan, in the tender scam case. He has been asked to appear before the ED zonal office in Ranchi on May 24.
The investigation pertains to alleged irregularities and payment of “bribes” in the department against awarding tenders. Rural development minister Alamgir Alam has been arrested in the case following the cash haul of Rs 35.23 crore from residence of the domestic help of his personal assistant Sanjeev Lal on May 6.
According to ED sources, the documents recovered from the raids at the residence of the domestic help of minister’s PA, there was a mention of some Manish. ED sleuths doubt that this could be the IAS officer Manish Ranjan. In the tender commission scam in the department, the commission was fixed right from the level of Chief Engineer to minister Alam and the syndicate used code words to distribute the commission money received from the tender, they said.
ED informed the court that it recovered an excel sheet where all the details of department-wise commission has been written on its third page. This sheet contains details of the total amount of the tender, the amount of commission and the minister’s share, it said.
“In the rural development department, the commission money was distributed with the help of code words; Code ‘H’ was used for minister which means honorable minister, ‘M’ for Manish, ‘S’ for Sanjeev Lal and ‘TC’ for Tender Committee and ‘CE’ for Chief Engineer,” ED told the PMLA court.
He has received MGNREGA Excellence Award from the PM for two years and Nirmal Gram Award from the President.