As the case stands, a tender-bid for 400 steel bus shelters to be constructed in Chennai under the public-private partnership model was floated in 2015 under Build Operate Transfer (BOT) model. The 400 bus shelters were split into eight tender packages. The companies that won the tender for these shelters were to retrieve their costs through advertisements displayed at the shelter with a fixed amount paid to the city corporation for a period of fifteen years.
What is new in this case, according to the material released this week by Arappor Iyakkam, is that three companies won the tenders. They were Shine Outdoor Advertising Pvt Ltd., Skyrams Pvt Ltd. and Fine Arts Communicators. All three companies, Arappor Iyakkam says, were registered under the same address—an office in Nungambakkam, Chennai.
Jayaraman, founder of Arappor Iyakkam told TNM that the tender process itself was a farce and that the three companies were started only days before the process began. “In the later part of 2019 we started looking at the balance sheets of these companies, what turnover they have and we found they had been registered only 15 days before the tender process began. When we looked at the shareholders and the directors, they were the same.”
One of the names Arappor Iyakkam has unearthed is Senthil Prabhu Rajan alias Valliamman Prabhu Coimbatore district’s joint secretary of Amma Peravai, AIADMK. He is not named in the FIR filed by DVAC. Rajan held 50% shares in both Shine and Skyrams Ltd. Another, Sidharth Damodaran held 50% in Skyrams and his wife held 19% in Fine Arts Communicators. Sidharth’s brother held 50% shares in Shine and 80% in Fine Arts. Essentially, the same set of people pretended to be in different companies. Skyrams was awarded 3 of the eight tender packages, Shine was awarded two, while the remaining three went to Fine Arts. All three also failed to build the shelters in the given period of three months.
Arappor estimates that if the scam went on unchecked, the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) would suffer a loss of over Rs 400 crore. “This is a conservative estimate. We checked with Skyrams what their yearly turnover is and also what they have been paying to GCC so far. We also enquired with advertising companies what the other expenses that Skyrams and the rest would incur. These expenses that we have projected are a generous guess and the revenue that we have estimated is conservative. This would make it easier for investigating authorities to prove. It is likely that the revenue that can be earned by the three companies is even higher.” So far, according to the information put forward by Arappor, the three companies since 2017-18, when the shelters were finally completed, have been making around Rs 45 crore a year. “We have estimated that Skyrams made about Rs 30 crore, Shine made Rs 7 crore and Fine Arts made Rs 8 crore.”
Arappor further alleges that officials in the GCC have been involved in this scam. In order to help increase the revenue that the three companies could make, no advertisement tenders were allocated to GCC-run bus shelters since 2016, says Arappor. According to their findings, an announcement was made in 2016 for these tender applications, but the eProcurement process did not even begin as tenders were not floated online. For this, Arappor cites a petition filed by Elite Publicities in the Madras High Court claiming the same. The anti-corruption NGO also alleges that the tender for advertising in GCC-run bus shelters was cancelled and to this date a new one has not been opened. “Essentially, so far, GCC has been advertising government schemes in these shelters at no cost, but no one else has been able to. This is when the corporation says that it is running on a fiscal deficit,” adds Jayraman.