Days after filing a first information report (FIR) with Assam's Criminal Investigation Department against his predecessor Prateek Hajela for "anti-national activities", State NRC (National Register of Citizens) Coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma has filed another FIR accusing him of money laundering. Mr. Hajela is an IAS officer currently posted in his home State, Madhya Pradesh.
The second FIR was lodged on June 13 with the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption wing of the Assam Government.
In his complaint, Mr. Sarma said his predecessor had violated the Minimum Wages Act through Wipro, the system integrator (SI) that was given the task of supplying data entry operators for the NRC updating exercise. But while Wipro was paid ₹14,500-17,500 per data entry operator per month, the operators were paid only ₹5,500-9,100 every month from 2015 to 2019.
"As per a provisional audit report, the Accountant General, Assam has observed that the difference of margin from 45.59% to 64.27% was exorbitant and the audit assessed that undue benefit of ₹155.83-crore was allowed to SI/labour contractor after allowing 10% profit margin to the contractor," the FIR read.
"Undue benefit to the tune of ₹155.83-crore is a huge amount and it is reasonable to suspect that kickbacks and money laundering must have occurred in the process. It may be mentioned here that during my investigation, it came to light that one person acted as middleman," Mr. Sarma wrote in the FIR.
He also cited the audit report as pointing to an avoidable expenditure of ₹10.73-crore in connection with the engagement of third party monitoring consultant for the NRC updating exercise.
The NRC exercise has virtually been in a limbo since August 31, 2019 when the complete draft was published, leaving out 19.06 lakh people out of 3.3 crore applicants for alleged lack of proper citizenship documents.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government and the NRC authority have contested this draft list of citizens and sought re-verification of at least 20% of the names in districts bordering Bangladesh and 10% in the other districts. They claimed that many foreigners or "illegal immigrants" had made it to the NRC by submitting fake or forged documents.
