RTI exposes fraud in BBMP

An RTI application has brought to light the case and many other violations. Munirathna is now the Yeswanthpura ward corporator, who is already in trouble for building faulty compound wall at the city’s Veterinary College, which had collapsed last year killing school girl Sanjana Singh on the spot.

The RTI query, which revealed the shocking contractor-officials nexus, also disclosed that Palike officials had cleared his dues within two months of issuing the work order.
Documents with Deccan Herald — obtained through an RTI application by M Pari, a former corporator of the erstwhile Bharatinagar ward — indicate the rapport Munirathna enjoyed with the BBMP engineers.

The papers related to 2009 show that these dealings happened when Dilip Rau was the BBMP administrator and S Subramanya the Palike commissioner.

As the documents show, the Palike engineers not only ensured that payments are made at the earliest, within two to three months of the “completion” of the work on most of the occasions, but also revised (“escalated”) the cost of the project well before awarding him the contract.

The records are clear that the Palike officers, right from the chief engineers to the executive engineers, assistant executive engineers, assistant engineers, chief accounts officers and the accounts clerks had apparently facilitated him to flout all the norms and get the payments at the earliest.

In one of the many cases, the work order for rehabilitation and strengthening of the Jalahalli Road from Ayappa Temple to Gangamma Circle with an estimated cost of Rs 99 lakh (which later escalated to Rs 1.02 crores) was given on May 28, 2009. But the work was shown as completed on March 31, which is two months before the contract was awarded.

Although the engineers in many cases left the completion report incomplete, the contractor still got the payment. Copies of some completion reports suggest that the engineers had put their seals and signatures on them and allowed the contractor to fill in the blanks.

Another glaring breach of norms was inappropriate affixing of administrative and technical sanctions seals. The rules require that two seals to be fixed in the middle of the last page of the detailed estimate. A top BBMP official told Deccan Herald on condition of anonymity: “The seal of administrative sanction should be on the left side and adjacent to it. The seal of technical sanction should be on the right. These seals are as important as the governor’s seals, but looking into the documents it appears that all the guidelines were thrown to the wind.”

In another instance, a stretch of road was to be repaired at Jalahalli but the work was split into two “packages.” The reason for splitting the project because  the State government’s approval was required for projects with costs Rs 1 crore or above. To circumvent this, the projects were split into two so that the government’s approval could be avoided since the State’s scrutiny system is widely perceived as relatively stronger than that of the BBMP.

“You are not supposed to split the work in one stretch, as mandated by the PWD  code,” said a top official.