Chennai: Madras high court on Wednesday reserved its order on two PILs alleging 397 crore corruption in the procurement of transformers for Tangedco when V Senthilbalaji was the state electricity minister. Concluding the final hearing, the first bench of Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and Justice G Arul Murugan reserved its orders.The case pertains to a plea moved by Arappor Iyakkam and AIADMK advocates wing deputy secretary E Saravanan. They accused Tangedco of corruption, alleging that 10 tenders worth 1,182.88 crore were floated in a biased way for the procurement of 45,800 transformers between 2021 and 2023.The petitioner accused Tangedco of collusive bidding and cartelisation, pointing out that 36 bidders quoted the same price for transformers. Tangedco turned a blind eye to all bidders who quoted the same price in seven tenders, leading to a violation of the Tender Transparency Act and a loss of 397 crore to the state, the NGO said.It further claimed that the value of 500 kVA transformers was 7.89 lakh each. But when the tender was floated, it was inflated to 12.49 lakh. Citing this pricing gap of 58.3%, the petitioners filed a complaint on July 6, 2023, requesting to constitute a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to conduct a time-bound, court-monitored fair investigation.Opposing the plea, the Tamil Nadu Power Distribution Corporation Ltd submitted that the petitions were ill-advised, speculative and unsupported by admissible materials.“The claims that there was a scam in the procurement of distribution transformers (DTs) and a consequential loss to the exchequer are false, baseless and devoid of any truth. These allegations are not only based on a flawed and unsubstantiated comparison of dissimilar products and a complete misunderstanding of the technical specifications and procurement procedures of Tangedco,” TNPDCL said.
