India Cements Ltd Managing Director and Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) President, N Srinivasan, on Monday appeared before the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with the ongoing investigation into the alleged quid-pro-quo deals involving Kadapa MP and YSR Congress Party chief, Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, who is currently in judicial custody.
Srinivasan was earlier summoned by the investigative agency to explain the Rs 140-crore investment by India Cements into Jagathi Publications, a media house that publishes Telugu newspaper Sakshi, and a couple of other firms floated by Jagan, as he is popularly known.
“I have furnished the clarifications to whatever they have asked,” Srinivasan told Business Standard over the phone, after he returned from a day-long appearance at Dilkusha Guest House, the CBI’s makeshift office. He refused to elaborate further.
The CBI believes that the company’s investment in Jagan’s firms was a quid-pro-quo arrangement for favours received for the company’s cement plants in Andhra Pradesh from the state government when his father Y S Rajasekhara Reddy was the chief minister.
However, India Cements’ management had denied of any element of quid-pro-quo link between its investment in Jagan’s firms and the allotment of water and land by the then government to facilitate the expansion of the company’s cement plants. The company further stated the state government’s decision on water allocation to its cement plants was strictly in line with the state industrial policy.
The CBI has so far filed three chargesheets in the case, while citing the investments of several companies into Jagan’s firms and instances of alleged benefits received from the government in the form of awarding of projects and incentives. The CBI had arrested Nimmagadda Prasad, founder of Matrix Laboratories, in connection with awarding of a large port and industrial corridor project in which his firm was the Indian partner. A state minister and an officer had also been arrested and sent to judicial custody in this connection.