Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Government drops the multi-national company Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) from providing consultancy services for the State’s E-mobility project. State Transport Minister A K Saseendran confirmed the Government’s decision on Saturday.
Earlier, the opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala had questioned the Government’s move in roping in PwC as a consultant in the project even as the company remained ‘banned’ by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI).
The Communist Party of India Marxist (CPM) State Secretariat, which met on Friday, had told the Government to review all the agreements it has entered through M Sivashankar, former principal secretary and IT secretary, in the wake of his alleged involvement in the gold smuggling case.
Considering all these, the Government has decided to drop PwC as a consultant from the 3500 Cr Electrical Bus Project.
PwC was behind the appointment of Swapna Suresh, the main accused in the case of gold smuggling through diplomatic baggage channel, as a project manager with the State-run institution, Kerala State Information Technology Infrastructure Limited. There were allegations that Swapna had used a fake degree certificate to get the appointment to such a rank and also that it was IT secretary Sivasankar who appointed her.
It is amid all these allegations that the Government has now decided to remove PwC from the list of consultants for the E mobility project.
The Opposition had also alleged that M Sivasankar was behind the allotment of the consultancy contract to PwC. Denying the allegations levelled by Chennithala, the CM clarified that there is nothing unusual in the allotment of the contract to PwC. In response to the opposition’s allegations, the CM said that all procedures were correctly followed. Only the auditing section of PwC company was banned by the SEBI and not the company as such, the CM clarified.
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