The scam- tainted Haldia Port, the main cargo handling arm of the Kolkata Port Trust, has come under the CBI scanner.
The CBI has started inquiring as to how one single company ? Ripley & Co ? can carry out cargo handling operations in ten out of the 14 berths of the port without sharing any revenue with the Kolkata Port Trust.
?This is a part of the investigation of the government?s special investigation team (SIT), which has started probe to recover black money,? a shipping ministry official said.
FE first reported in August last year on the port sector scam on the basis of the Rajya Sabha secretariat memorandum, CAG and parliamentary panel reports, which highlighted major discrepancies in appointment of cargo-handling agents and disposing waste oil from the ports.
The CAG had pointed out appointment of unauthorised agents for onshore operation violating the provisions of the Major Port Trust Act, while a parliamentary standing committee on transport, tourism and culture, headed by Sitaram Yechury, identified major financial leakages in waste oil disposal.
Now, the Modi government has given its nod for the CBI probe, which may blow away the lid of a major scam adding up to R1.5 lakh crore.
The CAG findings of 2011-12 say that exporters and importers appointed private handling agents, who did most of the onshore handling at Haldia. The port had no control over this handling and a major share of the port?s revenue on account of cargo handling was carried away by private agencies without paying any royalty.
Every port is supposed to engage handling contractors under Section 42 of the Major Port Trust Act of 1963, wherein the contractor has to share revenue with the port. But no contractors in ten berths have been engaged under this Act. Section 48 of the Major Port Trust Act calls for fixing handling charges by the tariff authority for major port but the contractors fixed charges for themselves.
Such unauthorised contractors realise an average R250 per tonne, which means there is drainage of R5,000 crore every year from the system, said Ramakant Burman, a port officer who played the whistle blower to this irregularity and was sacked by the earlier government.
