New Delhi: A panel led by a retired Karnataka high court judge has found that the Yediyurappa government of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the state procured three lakh PPE kits from two Chinese firms in a manner that was “non-transparent, arbitrary and tainted with fraud”.
In its interim report, reported on by The Hindu, the panel has also recommended prosecution of the former chief minister and other health department officials who issued orders for the purchases of PPE kits during the time when COVID-19 cases were surging.
The John Michael D’Cunha Commission report has found that records were “built up to show that post facto approval of the Chief Minister was obtained.”
The News Minute has reported that the 1,722-page interim report, submitted on August 30 to current chief minister Siddaramaiah, pointed out that around Rs 1,000 crore was syphoned off in the alleged dubious deals.
The Hindu has quoted the report as saying that the order for the PPE kits were placed without placing an official global tender despite the principal secretary and personal assistant to the chief minister and additional chief secretary recommending the same.
The newspaper said, quoting another official note sheet as referred to in the panel report, that the tender was avoided keeping in mind the urgency of the situation. As such, DHB Global Hong Kong (China) was asked to supply 1 lakh PPE kits, via an order issued on April 2, 2020. One PPE kit was purchased at a price of Rs 2117.53.
Another order for PPE kits was placed on April 10 to DHB Global Hong Hong and Big Pharmaceuticals. The former supplied it at a cost of Rs 2104.53 per unit and the latter at 2049.84 per unit.
On the other hand, the price fixation committee of the state, a month prior, had quoted the estimated cost of one kit at Rs 211.3 – approximately 10 times lesser than what the kits were finally purchased for from the two foreign companies.
The basis for this estimation were the quotes received from three firms other than the DHB Global Hong Kong and Big Pharmaceuticals, from which ultimately the kits were bought by the Yediyurappa government, without inviting any other firm through a government tender.
The Hindu quoted from the report that orders were placed with two local suppliers before and after the April order to the China-based firms. When it became known that one of the local suppliers sold the kits for Rs 330.40 per unit in March, the price was revised to Rs Rs 725 per unit for local suppliers – several times less than the price at which the two foreign suppliers sold.
“Misappropriation, mishandling and malpractice worth hundreds of crores has taken place (as per the report). Many files that are said to be missing were not submitted to him (Justice D’Cunha) despite attempts to track the files,” The News Minute quoted state’s current law minister, H.K. Patil, as having said. The current government established the commission in August last year.
Former health minister of the state and current BJP MP K. Sudhakar rejected the report as ‘politically motivated’.