Dharmana summoned to court

Roads & buildings minister Dharmana Prasada Rao and two senior IAS officers have been summoned by the special court for CBI cases to appear before it on September 25 in the Jagan Mohan Reddy assets case.

Taking into cognizance the CBI’s fourth chargesheet in the case, the court asked the accused, including Dharmana, IAS officers Manmohan Singh and M Samuel, who performed stints in the industry and infrastructure department, to present themselves before it.

Five companies, four of them represented by Jagan, have also been issued summons.

Dharmana is accused of flouting norms in allocating huge chunks of land to the Vanpic project during the regime of former chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy in which he was the revenue minister.

Dharmana has submitted his resignation to chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy but was invited to resume his duties pending a decision on it.

Among the other individuals accused in the case are Jagan Mohan Reddy himself, former minister Mopidevi Venkataramana, IRAS officer K V Brahmananda Reddy, Jagan’s financial adviser Vijay Sai Reddy, industrialist Nimmagadda Prasad, his brother Nimmagadda Prakash.

Of the nine accused persons, Jagan, Mopidevi, Nimmagadda Prasad and Brahmananda Reddy are presently in prison.

As ministers in the Rajasekhara Reddy regime, Mopidevi and Dharmana were alleged to have flouted norms and awarded the project and huge chunks of land to Nimagadda Prasad’s Vanpic Projects Private Limited instead of Vanpic Ports Private Limited, which is the special purpose vehicle set up for execution of the project.

The CBI filed the chargesheet on the deal on August 13.

In it, the agency said the Vanpic project was given to Nimmagadda Prasad by the then Rajasekhara Reddy government in return for quid pro quo favours to Jagan Mohan Reddy’s media company.

Dharmana Prasada Rao, Mopidevi and the three bureaucrats have so far been charged under sections of the IPC only.

The CBI needs sanction for their prosecution from the government to proceed against them under the Prevention of Corruption Act.