According to the report, in 1995, the officials awarded 15 tourist facilitation counters -- nine within the Customs hall and six outside the hall -- to Indian Tourism Development Co-operative which operated under the acronym ITDC, at concessional terms and without a tender.

Interestingly, the contract for the company was extended in 1996 on similar terms by the new chairman, Ranjan Chatterjee. There has, however, been no enquiry ordered into this so far.

The report alleges that the co-operative was granted the space at the rate of Re 1 per month plus a fee of 15 per cent of net profit per year compared to the Rs 275 per sq mt plus a royalty of Rs 16 lakh for the first year, with a 10 per centescalation for every year after that, for other companies.

The co-operative thus ended up paying only Rs 12 as rent for the first year against the Rs 39 lakh that it would have paid at the normal rates, the report says. The report names Sudhir Kumar, former Executive Director (Finance and Administration), C K S Nair, former Deputy General Manager (Commercial) and S Basu, Deputy General Manager (Commercial) as parties to the violation.

Officials in the commercial department of the AAI, however, claim that the contract had initially been awarded only on an experimental basis for one year and was subsequently extended because the company was performing satisfactorily. The AAI did try to terminate the contract in 1997 after the vigilance department pointed out the irregularities. The co-operative, however, obtained a stay order and managed to continue operations through 1997-98.

AAI officials defend themselves on the plea that it was the first time that such a contract was awarded for counters providingfree tourist information. Earlier counters providing free information were manned by AAI staff. In 1995 for the first time the AAI decided to make commercial use of the space, giving information counters the right to operate other tourist services for a fee that would constitute their turnover.

But the argument of the vigilance department was that once the company was allowed to offer commercial services it should have been asked to bid for the space. The AAI Act does not provide for any special allotment at concessional terms to co-operatives.