E-tender scam: BJP minister's ex-secretaries face arrest

Bhopal: Sleuths of Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of Madhya Pradesh police on Saturday raided houses of two former secretaries of a senior BJP leader, Narottam Mishra, and seized ‘incriminating documents’.

They were arrested in connection with an e-tendering scam during the tenure of Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s government, and were taken into custody by EOW on Friday evening for interrogation.

According to director general (DG) (EOW) K.N Tiwari, the documents establishing links of Vinod Pandey and Nirmal Awasthi, who were Mr Mishra's private secretaries while he was serving as a minister during Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s government, with some private companies were recovered in the raids from their houses.

The scam involved tampering of biddings through software to award projects of various departments of state government, worth '3000 crore, to a few favoured contractors.

Mr Mishra however cried foul over the arrest of his former secretaries “This is a political vendetta launched by the Kamal Nath government targeting me. The state government was trying to pressure me by arresting my former secretaries. But I will not succumb to any pressure by the government” Mr Mishra said.

He dared Mr Nath's government to produce evidence linking him in the e-tendering scam and said, “The state Congress government has set an unhealthy trend by targeting the Opposition leaders without any rhyme or reason”.

“Not a single project was cleared in e-tendering process during the previous government. Not a single paisa was disbursed in e-tendering. It was the previous state BJP government which had unearthed the scam and cancelled the entire e-tendering process thereafter,” he said.