People's Democracy

Investigate Maytas Companies

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) issued the following statement on January 14, 2009.

THE central government has asked the Serious Fraud Investigation Office to investigate the affairs of Satyam Computer Services Ltd. While this needs to be done, it is also necessary to examine the business dealings and finances of Maytas Infra Ltd and Maytas Properties Ltd.

The Maytas companies have been given contracts worth over Rs 30,000 crore by the Andhra Pradesh state government and have accumulated a huge amount of land. One example is the Rs 12,220 crore Hyderabad Metro Project. It has now come to light that the managing director of DMRC had written to the deputy chairman, Planning Commission in September 2008, protesting against the PPP model adopted in the case of Hyderabad Metro, where 296 acres of prime land has been made available to the BoT operator for commercial exploitation. Warning of a �big political scandal� the DMRC managing director had also warned of a �hidden agenda� of the developer to �extend the Metro network to a large tract of his private land holdings so as to reap a windfall profit of four to five times the land price�. The objections raised regarding this contract by E Sreedharan, head of the Delhi Metro Rail Corp. Ltd (DMRC), led to the removal of the DMRC as a project consultant.

The Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) wants the Prime Minister to order a high level probe into the various projects sanctioned to the Maytas companies in Andhra Pradesh alongwith the investigation into the affairs of these two companies.