The CBI has indirectly given a clean chit to former chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu in the Emaar township case currently before the Special CBI court. Amid allegations that the international bids for golf course, convention centre and township were stage-managed to benefit Emaar Properties, Dubai, the two other bidders gave a statement to the CBI that the decision to exit from the project was taken on their own as the project did not appear to them to be viable. CBI submitted the witness statements of L&T and Lanco Infratech, a consortium partner of IOI Corporation of Malyasia. In the statement by L&T deputy general manager Srinivasan Kumar, it was stated, “We did our own financial model and market analysis and found that project is not vailable.”
“We did not bid for the project,” Mr Chukkapalli Suresh, chairman of Phoenix group, who was the former vice-chairman of Lanco Infratech, said. “There was no pressure for not submitting the RFP (request for proposal). We did not submit the RFP as we felt that the project was not economically viable,” he said.