RAJ KUMAR
Ranchi, Aug.3: A Tata Motors employee, Vinay Kumar Singh, has knocked on the door of Dhurwa police station in the Jharkhand capital to register an FIR against former minister and Jamshedpur East legislator Saryu Roy.
Singh’s advocate Vinod Sahu informed this saying the action was taken following direction of the Jharkhand High Court, who heard the matter in the form of a PIL and disposed of with a liberty to Singh to register an FIR.
Roy, who had defeated then sitting Chief Minister Raghubar Das in the 2019 assembly elections, did not express any amazement over the development. “Entire matter is already in the knowledge of the anti-corruption bureau,” he said when contacted for his comments over the development.
The MLA said that the ACB has written in its report that the petitioner had filed photocopies related to the case and they have to be matched with the original ones. He said that the departmental enquiry did not suggest loss of a single penny in this matter. The entire document related to this matter is available with him and anyone can see it, Roy added.
Dhurva police station officer in-charge Vimal Nandan said that he will send the FIR to the anti-corruption bureau (ACB) for a probe.
Explaining how the situation arose, Sahu said, former food and civil supply minister Roy and some of his close associates committed financial irregularities on a large scale in the name of publication of the official magazine, Aahar.
Roy selected Jharkhand Printers on nomination basis for the magazine publication involving more than Rs 15 lakh while according to Financial and Executive Rules of the Government of Jharkhand adopting tender process is necessary for the work involving an amount of more than Rs 15 lakhs.
“Rule 245 has to be resorted to relax rule 235 of the Financial Rules for giving work on nomination. Along with this, the consent of the finance department and cabinet is also necessary.”
Roy neither took consent from the finance department nor took the cabinet approval,” advocate Sahu said.
Sahu said: “Public relations department works for the promotion of every department of the state government, but Roy published a separate magazine for his department while he was a minister. The sole purpose behind this was to embezzle government funds.”
Explaining the modus operandi, the advocate said: “For publication of a magazine without tender the then department minister appointed his own personal assistant Anand Kumar as expert executive editor. On the basis of telephonic conversation with Kumar, Jharkhand Printers was ordered to print 2,61,793 copies of the magazine every month. When the information about this disturbance started coming out, the tender was done for the publication of the magazine in April 2018 and the work was again given to the same Jharkhand Printers who were already publishing the magazine.”
“Other companies participating in the tender had a lot of experience of working in Jharkhand and for the state, while Jharkhand Printers had only three years of experience. Interesting thing was that Jharkhand Printers talked about the experience of their work that they have published in a magazine called Yugantar Prakriti. It may be known that the chief patron of Yugantar Prakriti is Roy and the editor is his personal assistant Kumar,” he said.
