The Muvattupuzha Vigilance Court on Thursday dismissed a complaint filed against Jacob Thomas, Director, Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau, alleging irregularities in installation of solar panels at various offices of the Port Department.
Dismissing the petition, Enquiry Commissioner and Special Judge P. Madhavan said the complaint had no merit even to forward it for a quick verification and rejected it.
“On going through the inspection report of the finance wing, the work of solar panels were entrusted to SIDCO and Keltron after obtaining administrative sanction from the government. These two are government agencies and hence the action of entrusting the work to the government agencies cannot be considered as an offence of criminal misconduct under Section 13(d) (i) of the PC Act (Prevention of Corruption Act. Here the beneficiary of the act of R3 and 4 is government itself and hence the court find that the action cannot come under the purview of the criminal misconduct as envisaged in the act’’, the judge observed.
Noting that the complaint had been filed when another complaint having similar allegations was pending before it , the court pointed out that the petitioner could produce no other evidence and asserted the need to avoid such petitions, which caused wastage of time.
The complaint, filed by Gireeesh Babu of Kalamassery, stated that Port Department had entered into an agreement with SIDCO and Keltron for installing solar panels at various port department offices for an ₹35 lakhs and ₹164 lakhs which caused loss to the government.
The complaint had named Jacob Thomas, former Director of Ports; Principal Secretary of Ports Department; SIDCO Managing Director; Keltron Managing Director; Managing Director of Safe Guard Lightings Pvt Ltd and Managing Director of MRO-Tek, Bangalore, as respondents in the petition.
Earlier in February, the court had rejected a petition raising corruption charges against the VACB Director.
