Chandigarh, June 21 (IANS) The Punjab vigilance arrested Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Sanjay Popli and his secretary on corruption charges.
As per the FIR, Popli allegedly sought one per cent commission from a contractor of a Rs 7 crore sewerage project in the Nawanshahr town during the previous Congress regime.
The contractor paid Rs 3.5 lakh through Sanjeev Vats, a Superintendent-level official posted as secretary to the officer, who was heading the Water Supply and Sewerage Board, on January 12.
The officials said Popli was seeking the remaining Rs 3.5 lakh from the contractor, who recorded his phone calls and complained on the anti-corruption helpline set up by the present Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government.
The officer was arrested from his house in Chandigarh on Monday evening.
Saraswat was seconded by former ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair, who also said that India had the anti-satellite missile capability more than a decade ago but there was no political will at the time to demonstrate it.
"This is the public fund and we are its custodians. My priority while sanctioning the grants is the local necessity and its utilisation in the past," Khalsa, a suspended MP of the Aam Aadmi Party, told IANS.
Ravneet Kaur, who was four months pregnant, had gone missing from outside her parents' house at Bagge Ke Pipal village in Ferozepur district around a fortnight ago.
India on Wednesday made its way into an elite club of "space super powers" as its anti-satellite missile A-SAT successfully targeted a live satellite on a low earth orbit in just three minutes.
