Corruption
Mediclaim Insurance row: Governor should order an inquiry headed by CS, says Omar
Srinagar: After the Governor of JK Satya Pal Malik said that the Mediclaim Insurance Scheme has almost been terminated as it was found that The tenders were changed to suit a particular company, NC Vice President Omar Abdullah has said that an inquiry needs to be ordered to find who was behind this.
In a tweet, the former Chief Minister said:
The Hon @jandkgovernor now needs to order an inquiry headed by the Chief Secretary to establish who was behind the allotment of the insurance contract. The sums of money involved are too big for this to have been a straight forward mistake. https://t.co/HPQ0kUngiJ
— Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) October 25, 2018
In an interview to a New Delhi-based TV channel, Malik said, “It will take couple of days (for the official cancellation order).”
“I studied it myself. The issue is that the government had not issued any tenders. A private company had asked for tenders on behalf of another company. Those bids were not displayed anywhere on our (government’s) website. The tenders were changed to suit a particular company,” Malik said in the interview.
“It was full of frauds. I discussed the issue with the chief secretary and made it clear that such things can’t happen in my presence. So we decided to cancel it”.
The Governor’s administration had rolled out the scheme with much fanfare on September 20 this year.
MLA Kulgam Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami had alleged that the insurance scheme has been rolled out to benefit a particular corporate company.
“What criterion was followed to select the particular company is not known to anybody which has raised serious doubts over the scheme, for which the employees have to shell out Rs 8777 as annual premium,” he had said in a statement.
Earlier this month, Reliance General Insurance had said that it has won the contract to provide health insurance cover to Jammu and Kashmir government staff after a “rigorous and transparent competitive tender process.”
The company’s statement came after Congress president Rahul Gandhi alleged that the general insurance company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Anil Ambani’s Reliance Capital, got the health insurance mandate from the J&K government due to his proximity to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In a tweet, Gandhi had said:
When your BFF is the PM, you can get the 1,30,000 Cr. Rafale deal, even without relevant experience. But wait. There’s more!
Apparently, 400,000 JK Govt staff will also be arm twisted into buying health insurance ONLY from your company! https://t.co/DlEOqWA2NH
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) October 6, 2018
