The Namma Bengaluru Foundation on Monday denied having offered Indian Police Service officer D Roopa the Namma Bengaluru Award, after she claimed to have declined it. Instead, the foundation accused her of “relentlessly lobbying” to get the award, The New Indian Express reported.

“She was never offered this award, and so there was no case of her turning it down,” the foundation said in a statement.

Roopa, who is now the Bengaluru inspector general of police (home guard and civil defence), made news in July 2017 after she alleged that All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader VK Sasikala was given special privileges in her jail cell in Bengaluru. She had made the allegations against Sasikala when she was the deputy inspector general (prisons). Roopa was transferred to her current post after submitting her report on Sasikala.

On Saturday, the IPS officer had questioned the process of selecting the jury members who decide on the winners of the “Government Official of the Year” award.

This is the ninth edition of the awards. The Namma Bengaluru Foundation is funded by entrepreneur and Bharatiya Janata Party MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar, and the jury members are members of political parties and businessmen involved in government projects.

“There were multiple communications by this nominee [Roopa] to lobby to the jury, Namma Bengaluru Foundation team and the trustees,” the foundation said after Roopa claimed to have declined the award. “This person had engaged with the jury extensively and did not mention a word of these newly discovered ‘views’ at any stage of her interaction.”

The Namma Bengaluru Foundation also said that Roopa had written the letter supposedly declining the award and voicing her misgivings about the process by which the winners were selected. The police officer, however, said the foundation “admitted that the whole process was rigged” by “saying that I knew the results”. She also said she had participated in the process only till the foundation was not involved with a political party, The New Indian Express reported.

Before being nominated to the Rajya Sabha by the BJP, Chandrasekhar was an independent MP.