Chairs, Cheats, and Bogus Bills
In his report, Rao also unveiled EY audit exposes, which are nothing short of daylight robbery. If the fire-safety tender was a scam and the gym contract was a daylight robbery, the bucket chair saga is pure theatre — equal parts comedy and crime. Stadium seating, meant to host thousands of fans, was reduced to just another cash register for the HCA mafia.
The story begins in January 2021. Sealed quotations were invited for 1,100 bucket chairs. The deadline? Two days. One of those was a Sunday. A deliberate move to keep competition out and fix the game. The authorised tender committee was bypassed entirely. Secretary R. Vijayanand handled the deal himself, with all the transparency of a smoke-filled backroom.
Three bids came in, and surprise, surprise — two work orders landed with a single vendor: M/s Excellent Enterprises. The very next day, the company was paid in full: ₹31.85 lakh. No mention of advance terms in the order. No delivery yet. But who cares, the cheque had cleared.
As if that weren’t shady enough, the work order deadline for installation was quietly altered by hand, from 15 days to 45 days. And then the waiting began. One year and eleven months later, only 700 of the promised 1,100 chairs had materialised. No completion report. No penalty. Just another fat payout for zero accountability.
Also read: https://orangenews9.com/who-ruined-hyderabad-cricket-part-xxv/
Also read: https://orangenews9.com/who-ruined-hyderabad-cricket-part-xxiv/
When auditors dug deeper, the farce became an embarrassment. Invoices were undated and unsigned, in violation of GST rules. Despite this, fresh orders were repeatedly placed with Excellent Enterprises. In January 2023, yet another deal — this time for 400 chairs — was pushed through. Again, 100% advance. Again, invoices dated before the purchase order. And again, specifications left vague. A scam replayed on loop.
Now comes the punchline: Excellent Enterprises doesn’t even deal in bucket chairs. Is it official business? Electrical appliances. Its registered address? A functioning school. And its GST number? Cancelled as of January 2023. The whole thing was a cardboard cut-out company — the kind that shouldn’t win a school-canteen contract, let alone a stadium supply order.
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Once the Single-Member Committee took charge, the racket was exposed. Fresh tenders were floated. Chairs were sourced from RGA Enterprises at just ₹177 per piece, including GST. Compare that to the ₹2,586 per chair paid earlier, and the arithmetic is chilling. The inflated billing caused a direct loss of ₹43.11 lakh to HCA. Forty-three lakhs gone, not into stadium infrastructure, but into thin air.
This isn’t just a case of negligence. It’s a textbook fraud. Falsified tenders, manipulated deadlines, advance payments for ghost supplies, and repeat orders to a non-existent vendor. Every check and balance that should exist in a professional body was shredded. And when the fans do show up at Uppal, they’re literally sitting on the evidence of the loot.
If the chairs exposed the rot in procurement, the cricket ball scandal shows that the disease went right to the heart of the game itself.
Also read: https://orangenews9.com/who-ruined-hyderabad-cricket-part-xxi/
