I did not author the cabinet note on Vanpic project

Finding fault with CBI's investigation, former minister Mopidevi Venkataramana Rao on Wednesday wondered as to how the investigating agency could hold the secretary (of a department) solely responsible for omissions and commissions leaving the minister untouched in one case but do the opposite in another case.

V Surender Rao, counsel for the former infrastructure and investment minister, told a CBI court that Mopidevi was not the author of the cabinet note on the Vanpic project. It was done by the then secretary, Manmohan Singh. It was then circulated to the chief secretary and then to the cabinet. Referring to the statement of the then chief secretary Ramakanth Reddy that he did not understand the Vanpic project, Surender Rao wondered as to how a junior minister could understand it if a senior IAs officer could not.

On CBI's charge that Mopidevi cheated his cabinet colleagues by getting the project approved under deception, the counsel wondered as to why not a single minister was made a witness to say that Mopidevi deliberately concealed facts. “In one case, they (CBI) say that the secretary, an IAS officer, is solely responsible. In another case, they say the minister is solely responsible,'' Surender Rao said in an indirect reference to the OMC case where suspended IAS officer Y Sreelakshmi was made responsible and arrested but the minister was left untouched.

On CAG raising objections to the project, Rao wondered how the CBI, which works under the central government, relied on CAG observations when the centre government itself trashed the CAG report.

Surender Rao said that the I&I ministry independently had no right to allot water, power or land for any project and it was only a recommending authority. The allocations have to be made by the departments concerned.

“My job is to give only proposal. It has to be get consent of other departments and then approval by cabinet. People who took independent decisions were just given summons, made to appear and let off on bond,'' the former minister said through his lawyer. Earlier, CBI deputy legal advisor Balla Ravindranath said Mopidevi got the cabinet approval for the project without reflecting the facts in the cabinet memorandum.