Scam with a top 'billing'

You’ve heard these unflattering prefixes about the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) a hundred times and let a sigh of sympathy escape your lips. And then, you hear about the fake bills scam, the size of which could hit stratospheric levels at Rs 20,000 crore and beyond! Shell-shocked by the scale, by the astounding audacity of the racket, you seethe in rage, demand answers, and scream for the heads to start rolling.

Surely, the Palike’s chest now has more scams than funds. But the sheer size of the latest scam could rival even the infamous Commonwealth Games (CWG) embezzlement that had the entire nation in a tizzy. Yet, the Palike is in a hurry to hide that shame even as more skeletons keep tumbling out of the civic body’s cupboard.

Crying hoarse, the Opposition in the Palike is convinced the size of the mother of all misappropriations could exceed even that unbelievable Rs 20,000-crore mark. Here’s why: The parties claim financial irregularities were routine in almost all the 28 Assembly constituencies of the City over the last four years. A probe that covered only three constituencies - Rajarajeshwari Nagar, Gandhi Nagar and Malleswaram - unearthed a racket that was a whopping Rs 1,539.6 crore.

Call it a licence to loot. During 2006-07 to 2009-10, MLAs and bureaucrats in charge had a virtual free ride, without an elected body to steer the Palike. The BBMP’s performance graph nose-dived. The City’s mismanaged garbage piled on in heaps, its stormwater drains choked, its lakes and Palike properties were encroached with gay abandon. Roads aplenty resembled war-ravaged zones with potholes rivalling craters. Hoardings galore threw the City’s visual aesthetics to the winds in utter contempt.

Pushed to helpless disbelief, the public protested the Palike’s thrust for eminently unwanted infrastructure projects. But the Palike chose to keep the public at bay, ignored calls for consultation and steamrolled every protest to execute projects of the like of the Tagore Circle underpass. Roads that were in good condition were asphalted while the one in crying need for repair were left to rot.

No marks for guessing how this left a black mark on the Palike. Its litany of scams just kept mounting: From the garbage scam to the toilet scam, road racket to shady asphalt deals, stormwater drain irregularities to the job codes scam, the hall of shame had it all.

The scams, topped massively by the latest fraud on the Bangalorean, has only lent more credence to allegations of mass scale loot in the Palike. “If the BJP has anything to show as achievement, then it is only scams after scams. There is utter absence of administration,” notes M Pari, a former Bharathinagar ward corporator.

The latest racket wasn’t exposed in a jiffy. Palike sources recall how the recently removed Commissioner, Siddaiah, had received complaints about the fake bills scams in Rajarajeshwari Nagar, Gandhi Nagar and Malleswaram divisions on October 10 this year. Two days later, he instructed N Devaraj, chief engineer, Technical Vigilance Cell under Commissioner (TVCC), to probe the matter. The same day the team visited a few spots critical to the racket and collected information on the files. The day after, the teams spread out as instructions came from the very top, directing the zonal engineers to hand over all the relevant files.

It was clear the probe wouldn’t be a cakewalk. Records showed that the case had 10,900 files that had to be handed over to the TVCC. But the engineers attached to the three divisions delivered only 153 files, and the rest to the Palike’s Standing Committee on Taxation and Finance chaired by corporator Manjunath Raju, which had no role in the probe. The TVCC chief engineer’s repeated letters, seeking the files from the engineers, were blatantly ignored. The available 153 files alone unearthed a scam that was big enough at Rs 1,539.6 crore.

A day after the TVCC handed over its report on November 3, Siddaiah lodged a complaint with the Bangalore Metropolitan Task Force (BMTF) headed by Inspector General of Police R P Sharma. But even before the BMTF could begin its probe, a mysterious fire broke out in its police station gutting many files. Fortunately, the fire did not destroy the files linked to the scam, as they were preserved safely elsewhere, as claimed by sources in the BMTF and the Palike.

Sharma was clear that the size and the scale of the scam was far bigger than what people had initially thought.

But even before it could get serious about the investigations, the probe was handed over to the Crime Investigation Department (CID).

If this raised eyebrows, the sudden removal of Siddaiah as Commissioner was even more surprising. That at least three MLAs, including M Srinivas (RR Nagar), Dinesh Gundu Rao (Gandhi Nagar) and Ashwath Narayan (Malleswaram), had turned too vocal demanding his ouster, added muscle to speculations. On November 28, Siddaiah was transferred without any posting and in his place M K Shankarlinge Gowda was made the new commissioner.

Then came the November 30 BBMP Council Meeting. Strangely, this brought to the fore an unprecedented unity among the saffron BJP and the secular Congress party MLAs and corporators in targeting the TVCC chief N Devaraj for carrying out, what they alleged, a ‘faulty probe’. While levelling a volley of allegations against him, the MLAs and corporators had no interest in checking the authenticity of their statements.

The MLAs and corporators alleged that Devaraj had completed the report by examining 10,000 files in just two days. Devaraj, however, had worked with a team of the accounts superintendent and five of his subordinates, two staffers from the chief accounts office, three executive engineers and a superintending engineer, for 20 days. They went through only 153 files and not 10,000, as the elected representatives claimed in tandem.

As things stand, the probe is now taken away from a technically empowered BMTF to the CID, which is said to be lacking expertise to probe matters like the fake bills scam. The government has also turned down the plea for a CBI or a Lokayukta probe. While the BMTF has no restriction to keep its investigation limited to three constituencies, the CID certainly has its limits. The CID probe, then, appears to be a mere eyewash.

IT’S FAR AND WIDE

The fake bills scam is spread far and wide beyond the three Assembly constituencies, now under probe, if BBMP insiders are to be believed. This is one reason why the Palike’s watchdog, the Technical Vigilance Cell under Commissioner (TVCC) fears that the files not furnished by the engineers could be destroyed to ensure a decent burial for the scam. 

Palike sources say the scam goes beyond RR Nagar, Gandhi Nagar and Malleswaram, and has its roots deep in Mahalakshmipuram, Basavanagudi, Chickpet, Chamarajpet, Padmanabha Nagar, Jayanagar, BTM Layout, Shanthi Nagar, Shivaji Nagar, Vijayanagar, Bangalore South and Kengeri. JD(S) Floor Leader in the Council, Padmanabha Reddy, has even demanded a probe by the Lokayukta.

What brought the scam to the fore was the gross mismatch between the Rs 3,000 crore purportedly spent in the three Assembly constituencies and the lack of any visible development on the ground. A member of the team that probed the scam under TVCC had this to say: “How so much money can be spent on projects in the old areas of Bangalore, where the scope for any construction activity has reached a saturation point. We are pretty sure that in these core areas, nobody can spend more than Rs 30 crore a year.”

The trail

* Tendering done without any prior information or any notes in the records
* Details missing on the publication of tender notification
* Tender process was taken up to favour contractors
* Engineers executed the work without seeking revalidation from the Commissioner
* The engineers inflated the tender rates much above the Schedule of Rates, issued every year by the Public Works Department
* Payments made without seeking Quality Test Reports from the Quality Control Department of the Palike
* Completion certification lacked authorisation from the competent authority