D Roopa has written to Karnataka’s chief secretary, requesting an investigation against Hemant Nimbalkar over a contentious bidding document that was eventually dropped.
Karnataka Home Secretary D Roopa wrote a letter dated December 26 to the Chief Secretary of State Vijaya Bhaskar, alleging that her partner, IPS officer Hemanth Nimbalkar, filed a false and motivated complaint against her, as TNM has learned. Furthermore, it has demanded an investigation against Nimbalkar, claiming in turn that he was trying to favor a private company in the Bengaluru Safe City Project. This is in the context of a Times of India report that appeared on Friday suggesting that Roopa was being investigated by the Chief Secretary for allegedly ‘posing’ as Secretary of the Interior and interfering with the bidding process for the Safe City Project of Bengaluru, which spans several countries. (It is not clear where the impersonation issue arises, as Roopa is Karnataka’s interior minister.)
The scope of the Bengaluru Safe City Project, also known as the Nirbhaya Project, includes the installation of 7,500 cameras and other surveillance measures as a means of preventing crime against women and children in the city. The project is being implemented by the Karnataka Department of the Interior. While Hemanth Nimbalkar is the chair of both the Invitation for Bids Committee and the Scrutiny Committee for the project, Roopa is the Secretary (PCAS) of the Department of the Interior.
On Friday, the Times of India published a report that an anonymous IPS official had posed as the Home Secretary to obtain confidential information about the project from a private auditor tasked with drafting the bidding documents for the project. The content of the report is in line with a complaint written by IPS officer Hemant Nimbalkar, Additional Police Commissioner (Administration) to the Chief Secretary of Karnataka on 7 December.
TNM has a copy of the complaint made by Nimbalkar to the CS, which does not explicitly mention D Roopa; however, the complaint refers to calls made by Roopa. In this complaint, Nimbalkar said that Roopa’s act of seeking details from private auditor EY was “undue illegal interference” for “illicit profits.”
Now, Roopa has sent a complaint against Nimbalkar to the Chief Secretary, making a similar accusation against him. Informed sources have confirmed that in his letter, Roopa has alleged that Nimbalkar was trying to avoid scrutiny of the tender, as he was allegedly favoring a private company for the Rs 1,067 crore project. To prove his point, he has mentioned that the tender (request for proposal) was eventually abandoned following a complaint lodged with the Prime Minister’s office by Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), a Ministry of Defense company, which had also submitted a tender for the project but lost to a private company.
Roopa has said that he was reviewing the bidding process under the instructions of Household Additional Chief Secretary Rajneesh Goel, IAS, adding that he had spoken with auditor EY in his official capacity to determine more facts on the matter.
In demanding an investigation against Nimbalkar, Roopa asked to be removed from his position as chairman of both the Invitation to Bids Committee and the Scrutiny Committee of Bids, as he has been indicted by the Central Bureau of Investigation in the Ponzi scheme case of IMA from various countries.
In a statement that she has tweeted, Roopa denied the identity theft charge given that she is the Home Secretary. She said: “The complaint against my actions seems to have been made at the behest of those who benefited from the partial and unfair bidding. Each of my actions has been to safeguard the public interest and public money in the good faith performance of my duties as a public servant. I myself, as Secretary of the Interior, the allegation of identity theft is false and motivated. “
My complaint regarding the Nirbhaya / Safe City project. pic.twitter.com/AySN4jH2xc
– D Roopa IPS (@D_Roopa_IPS) December 25, 2020
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