She further said that all decisions about e-tenders were taken by the Madhya Pradesh Major Project Control Board (MPCB), of which Chouhan was the chairman. Thus, Mahdele, who was being held responsible for the e-tendering scam, has passed on the blame to Chouhan.

After Mahdele’s statement, Govind Singh, a senior minister in the Kamal Nath Government, said that Shivraj Singh Chouhan was the kingpin of all the scams scripted during the former BJP regime.

The e-tendering scam has triggered a slugfest between the government and the BJP and more importantly, within the BJP itself. The state government has ordered the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) to probe the scam.

Holding Shivraj Singh Chouhan responsible for all the irregularities in the departments now under EOW scanner, Govind Singh said that all those involved in the e-tendering scam would be jailed very soon.

“Shivraj Singh Chouhan is the kingpin of all the scams. We are waiting for the lifting of the model code of conduct for Lok Sabha elections,” he told newspersons.

He said several ministers of the previous BJP regime were involved in various scams. All of them would be sent behind bars after a thorough investigation, Singh warned.

Reacting sharply to the I-T raids on the premises of the close confidantes of chief minister Kamal Nath, including his OSD Pravin Kakkad, Singh said, “Kakkad is innocent. The I-T officials did not find anything from his premises. And that is why; he has moved the High Court seeking justice. Several ministers in the BJP government were in constant touch with Ashwini Sharma, from whose premises the I-T officials have recovered huge cash.”

The minister also claimed to have exposed a major scam in the Bhopal Cooperative Central Bank, whereby officials invested customers’ savings in bankrupt companies. “We are possession of facts that show massive corruption in the cooperative societies. We have also found out that in Bhopal Cooperative Central Bank, the officials invested money deposited by customers in bankrupt and tainted companies. We are going to take action in this matter very soon,” he said.

The minister not only attacked BJP leaders but also officials of the cooperatives department for concealing facts on the e-tender scam. Singh had, recently, complained to the chief minister that some departmental officials were not cooperating with the government in unearthing the scam.

Meanwhile, three software engineers of a local IT company, who were arrested by the EOW in connection with the e-tendering scam were presented in a special court on Friday and were handed over the EOW on a three-day remand.

A day after registering an FIR in the Rs 3,000-crore e-tendering scam against directors of seven private companies and unknown bureaucrats and politicians, the EOW had arrested three software professionals and raided a company jointly owned and operated by them for allegedly “hacking the government portal and modifying its contents.”

EOW had sought their remand from the court for further interrogation. Those arrested included Vinay Chaudhary, Varun Chaturvedi and Sumit Golwarkar. Their joint venture company called Osmo Software was raided and computers and laptops were seized.

A complaint by senior Congress leader Ajay Singh to PM Narendra Modi during the BJP regime in MP, seeking an ‘impartial probe’ into the e-tender tampering case, had also named the same company. The company’s proprietor Vinay Chaudhary has been denying his role in his statement to the EOW. He said his company, which has licensed LoadRunner, was contracted to conduct performance test of e-tendering portal. The contract was cancelled within two days of its award, he said.

Investigators say that like Vyapam, the e-tendering scam is a classic case of criminal misconduct’ where rival bidders were pushed out by manipulation of the I-T infrastructure of the Major Project Control Board (MPCB). Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan was the chairman of the Board, which alone was authorised to clear all high-value tenders.

Some senior officials involved in the racket even got their children employed on high salaries in companies that had bagged tenders fraudulently, EOW officials claimed.

“Massive pilferage of public money is being revealed. The data shows that tenders worth more than Rs 40,000 crores were floated within a small span of time. Engineers who raised objections were punished and slapped with show-cause notice,” said an EOW official.

On May 11, 2018, the MP State Electronics Development Corporation Managing Director informed the then chief secretary B.P. Singh about ‘criminal misconduct’ vis-à-vis certain tenders, including one numbered 10030 of Water Resources Department. The complaint was forwarded to the EOW for probe. Despite this, on May 22, 2108, the MPCB decided to award the Rs 1030-crore contract to the firm accused of malpractices.

MPCB, chaired by the chief minister, has the ministers of finance, water resources, Narmada Valley Development and Agriculture departments as members, besides a host of senior bureaucrats, including chief secretary, agriculture production commissioner, principal secretary, agriculture, additional chief secretaries of finance and Water Resources, vice-chairman of Narmada Valley Development Authority and chief engineer of Water Resources Department.

The EOW is planning to probe all the major tenders awarded since the new system was implemented. “It seems a cartel of companies, which should have been blacklisted as soon as the fraud was detected, continued to be given work, despite their conduct being brought to the notice of the top functionaries of the government. (IPA Service)