www.corruptionindrdo.com, however, cannot independently verify the authenticity of audio. Received from anonymous source.
www.corruptionindrdo.com has forwarded government agencies for further investigation.
Here is a conversation between Mr. D.K. Chatterjee and Mr. M.M. Pandey wherein Mr. Pandey is exposing the BEL corruption Modus Operandi observed in ordering of civil contracts in IACCS.
Mr. D.K. Chatterjee an IIT Kanpur Graduate of 1983 batch had worked in many indigenously developed products related to communications and radars. He is presently in the R&D group in-charge of the Radar Data processing. He is an engineer of par excellence in his field and through his in-house research and development he has saved a huge amount of foreign exchange for the country.
He has been targeted by the BEL management and his career has been stalled since he does not fit into the BEL model of going for foreign ToTs and with big corporate / private vendors to provide the defence forces equipment at very high cost and ensure kickbacks leading to corruption where persons at highest level BEL are involved. In the IACCS project the biggest challenge was to integrate the legacy Radars of Indian Air force and Army with the IACCS system since the output protocol of these old Radars was not compatible with input requirement for IACCS system.
Mr. D.K. Chatterjee and Mr. M.M. Pandey wherein Mr. Pandey is discussing the discrepancies which have been observed in ordering of civil contracts in IACCS. In turn Mr. Chatterjee tells about his experience wherein as a part of IACCS project he had worked on creating the interface (Radar Data Processing hardware and software) between the old legacy Radars and IACCS system. He was forced to use hardware which were pre-defined and at a very high cost.
As per him even with the high cost of hardware (since the software was written in-house) the cost of one system came to just about Rs 25 lacs. After the systems were proven he was unceremoniously removed from the project and the systems were subsequently outsourced and bought at a huge cost of about Rs 2.5 Crores each. With so many legacy Radars which were integrated to the IACCS the amount of money which has been misappropriated by the top management of BEL would run into hundreds of Crores.
This is again a case where an intelligent IIT graduate Electronics Engineer who did not compromise on corruption and worked for giving the Defence Forces the best at the least cost was harassed and removed from the main stream and made to suffer in his career. This is again in line with what has been brought out in the case of ordering of DDS software where a software worth not more than Rs 20 Crores was being bought at Rs 320 Crores and when one of the Managers in R&D became a whistle blower to stop this from happening he was harassed and bullied to the extent that he was forced to resign.
The Vigilance report which brought out this corruption had also noted that all the original team which worked on software related to IACCS (first phase wherein five nodes were established by BEL) was dismantled and engineers were either transferred out of the Unit or outside the project. Hence the modus operandi is the same in BEL for all persons who stand against corruption. They are harassed, side tracked, given punishment postings or suspended and terminated.
It can be understood that if one or two persons are targeted but in the project IACCS it is clearly brought out at various stages that persons have been targeted whenever they have spoken about the rampart corruption which is being monitored by the highest level of management in BEL.
If proper investigation is carried out by external government agencies it will clearly come out that in this project from the beginning itself at all stages and in all systems (software, hardware, civil contracts, sub-systems for hardened underground buildings) organized and planned corruption has taken place through a mafia (which may be external to BEL) and with full support from persons sitting at the highest level of BEL.
Some of the conversations of Mr. D.K. Chatterjee are as follows:
• I have talked to Shri Ajay Singh who is involved in the civil works of IACCS. He has also said that there are lots of discrepancies in the civil contracts.
• I was part of IACCS group who interacted with Air Force persons during the initial phase of the project. I was working in Radar Data Processing (RDP) and when we were interfacing with Air Force personnel they also told us that there was something very wrong going on in the project.
• The amount of corruption which is there in the project it does not look that CMD would have any control. If the loot is of the order of Rs 1000 to 2000 Crores, I think a very small part of it would have gone to BEL persons. Persons facilitating this loot in BEL would just get few foreign trips and perhaps some GM promotions. The very fact that Air Force has given BEL the job of civil construction on underground buildings is itself questionable since DRDO already had expertise in this and Air Force could have done this job ( directly through some private vendor) with DRDO help (this shows that the plan was to do all the corruption by just front ending BEL).
• I have also been a part of IACCS project from the very beginning (although I was looking after a very small portion related to RDP) but I also found something strange happening in the project. When I was doing the RDP I was asked by Mr. Anil Pant (the AGM in-charge of IACCS who was indicted by the Vigilance report dated 16th Nov’16 for manipulations in the ordering of DDS software but was subsequently promoted as General Manager) to choose the hardware from a particular vendor (on a single tender basis and at a very high cost from what was available in the market). As per Mr. Pant it was customers requirement to go with a particular vendor (how can customer dictate the vendor).
• Even taking the hardware at a higher cost I was able to make the system in-house at a cost of Rs 25 lacs. The same system they were getting from vendors at almost Rs 2.5 Crores (ten times the in-house cost).
• Although I was doing a very small part of the project the attitude which was there in the
overall project got reflected in this also (as in overall IACCS project they have been going for single tenders for ordering on pre-fixed vendors at much higher costs than available in the market).
• Everyone looked at me as if I have done a very big mistake by developing the system inhouse (maybe because I came on the way of persons making money out of outsourcing the same to pre-fixed vendors). Everyone (including the end user) tried to dissuade me from taking up the in-house development by telling me that the system is required urgently within six months thinking that I will raise my hands due to the impossible time lines set for me for development. Everyone was saying that RDP cannot be made in-house but like a fool I accepted the challenge and when I successfully demonstrated it, I was unceremoniously thrown out of the project.
• It is quite obvious that there is some serious misappropriation going on in the project at the highest level.
It is obvious that since after developing the system at a cost of Rs 25 lacs Mr. D.K. Chatterjee was thrown out of the project the required systems would have been bought at inflated cost (almost ten times) from pre-fixed vendors. This has been the modus operandi in the IACCS project wherein persons who had originally been part of the project and were instrumental in development of software and selection of hardware were unceremoniously removed from the project and a bunch of persons who had nothing to do with the project were placed at the positions where they manipulated the ordering in connivance with the persons at the highest level at BEL for personal gains.
