Congress MP Karti Chidambaram arrived at the CBI headquarters in New Delhi on Saturday for questioning in an alleged scam related to the issuance of visas to Chinese nationals.
Highlight
- CBI has been interrogating Karti Chidambaram since Thursday in the 11-year-old case
- The case pertains to an alleged bribe of Rs 50 lakh for the issuance of 263 project visas to Chinese workers.
- The CBI had registered an FIR against Karti and others on May 14.
The CBI on Saturday questioned Lok Sabha MP Karti Chidambaram for the third consecutive day in connection with a probe into alleged bribery of Rs 50 lakh for the issuance of 263 project visas to Chinese workers involved in the construction of the Talwandi Sabo power project in 2011. officials said. He reached the CBI headquarters in the early hours to face the investigation team. He said the interrogation is likely to continue for the whole day with lunch break.
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The CBI has been questioning Karti Chidambaram since Thursday in an 11-year-old case that the Congress leader has described as “most bogus” and the result of “political vendetta”. The case dates back to 2011 when his father P Chidambaram was the Union Home Minister. The CBI had registered an FIR against Karti and others on May 14 for allegedly paying a bribe of Rs 50 lakh to him and his close aide S Bhaskararaman by a top official of Vedanta group company Talwandi Sabo Power Ltd (TSPL). The CBI’s FIR states that the issuance of project visas to 263 Chinese workers.
TSPL was setting up a power plant in Punjab. 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 Union Home Minister. However, there was no provision for re-issuance of project visas, the FIR alleged. The agency has already arrested Bhaskararaman in this case.
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