CBI books 2 NHAI officials for graft

The CBI on Tuesday arrested two officials of the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) for providing monetary advantage to Oriental Structural Engineers (P) Ltd in the award of contract for the four-laning of Nagpur-Betul section of National Highway 69.

Senior officials confirmed that Rs 51 lakh was recovered from General Manager Nitin Jain and Rs 70 lakh from Chief General Manager S K Nirmal during a search. Both have confessed that the money was given by Oriental Structural Engineers, said sources. The Request for Qualification (RFQ) was designed to suit the requirements of Oriental and to the disadvantage of others,they said.

The two officials helped Oriental by disqualifying other contenders at the RFQ by insisting that any bidder which had submitted scanned documents at this stage would not be qualified for the second round,said CBI officials.

While six bidders were disqualified at the time of RFQ scrutiny,three of the remaining eight were disqualified by the circular on scanned documents that was issued on April 2. The project was awarded to Oriental at 15 percent higher than the estimated project cost,said the sources.