BBMP projects, worth Rs 12,943 cr, executed by KRIDL under ED scanner

Bengaluru: The Enforcement Directorate (ED), which raided the BBMP’s headquarters in connection with the alleged borewell scam, has broadened its investigation to include irregularities by the Karnataka Rural Infrastructure Development Ltd (KRIDL) in the execution of projects worth over Rs 12,943 crore.

On Thursday, the investigating agency directed the civic body to provide all documents related to the allocation of works to KRIDL over the past 10 years.

Between April 2015 and March 2021, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) had reportedly awarded more than 50 per cent of its total projects to a single agency, which helped bypass the standard tendering process.

Much of the work executed by KRIDL came under scrutiny after the Lokayukta’s 2022 report revealed that the BBMP had issued fake bills to claim payments amounting to Rs 118 crore in the RR Nagar area alone. In fact, there was not a single instance in which the civic body had fully completed a project, but it has claimed the entire payment.

Based on the Lokayukta’s damning report, the state government suspended eight engineers and tasked a one-man commission, headed by Justice HN Nagamohan Das, with the responsibility to investigate all KRIDL projects last year. These include road development, drain maintenance, debris removal, and borewell drilling, among other projects.

During the ongoing investigation into the borewell-related irregularities, the ED also began probing the KRIDL projects as BBMP’s former councillor NR Ramesh had submitted a detailed complaint to the agency back in 2022. The complaint alleged that KRIDL had been entrusted with a significant volume of work, despite lacking sufficient staff to monitor it on the ground.

'4G scam'

In September 2020, the Bengaluru Navanirmana Party (BNP) referred to the allocation of over 50 per cent of the BBMP’s 28,314 projects to a single agency as the "4G scam". This was because the BBMP misused an exemption under Section 4 of the Karnataka Transparency in Public Procurements (KTPP) Act to award these projects to one agency in an unprecedented manner.

Additionally, KRIDL received 10 per cent of the total payments for these projects. Other than the KRIDL and borewell-related irregularities, sources said the ED is looking beyond the ambit of enforcement case information report (ECIR) to look into other irregularities.