New Delhi: S Bhaskararaman who is said to be a close associate of Lok Sabha MP Karti Chidambaram was arrested by the CBI on Wednesday on allegations of him having connections with a Rs 50 lakh bribery case for clearing visas of 263 Chinese nationals.
The alleged case is about clearing visas of these Chinese nationals working at Talwandi Sabo Power Ltd in Punjab.
As per reports, the case dates back to 2011 when Karti Chidambaram’s father P Chidambaram was the Union Home Minister.
Bhaskararaman was taken in for questioning on Tuesday but in the early hours of Wednesday, he was arrested by the CBI.
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As per the CBI, Bhaskaraman was approached by Vikas Makharia, the then associate vice president of Talwandi Sabo Power Ltd (TSPL) who asked him for the reissue of the project visas for 263 Chinese workers.
These workers were working at the Mansa-based power plant.
It was alleged that the then VP of the company had approached Karti Chidambaram through Bhaskararaman.
The CBI said, “They devised a back-door way to defeat the purpose of the ceiling (maximum of project visas permissible to the company’s plant) by granting permission to reuse 263 project visas allotted to the said Chinese company’s officials.”
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The FIR of the case stated that Project visas were a special type of visa introduced in 2010 for the power and steel sector for which detailed guidelines were issued during P Chidambaram’s tenure as the Home Minister but there was no provision for the reissue of project visas.
