40% commission: Contractors announce massive protest

Contractors say nothing has changed despite complaining that MLAs had taken bribes

Months after alleging that 40% of the funds allocated to development works were taken away by ministers and MLAs as bribes, contractors in Karnataka said nothing has changed on the ground and vowed to stage a massive protest in the last week of April.

Speaking at an event organised by Jagruta Karnataka, Karnataka State Contractors’ Association president D Kempanna said they wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi before going to the public because they had hopes that his intervention would
help.

“After writing to the prime minister (on July 6, 2021), we had a lot of expectations. During the run up to (2018) elections, the prime minister termed the previous (Congress) regime as 10% government. Based on his words, we wrote to him stating that the bribery has increased to 40%,” he said.

“We also wrote to the Governor and chief minister. Instead, the chief minister demands proof. Do ministers take bribes by leaving such proofs? We are demanding an independent inquiry. We are ready to prove that the corruption is more than 40%,” Kempanna
added.

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Stating that nothing has changed in the last six months, Kempanna said a massive protest was inevitable. “In the last week of April, 50,000 contractors will protest in Bengaluru,” he said.

Retired IAS officer T R Raghunadnan, who made a presentation on the changing nature of corruption, said regular checks, reforms, whistleblower protection and swift action were needed to end the menace.

“There is a popular misconception that technology will bring transparency. In fact, what we are seeing are new modes of channeling and hiding money, which is becoming difficult to trace,” he said.

He noted that decentralisation of the governance was a key step in reducing corruption. “The visibility of corruption will go up when the systems are decentralised but the extent of corruption will come down,” he added.

Policy analyst K C Raghu questioned the silence of the opposition parties and the larger civil societies. “This kind of issue should have made everyone stand up in protest. The silence of the people is worrying,” he said.

Chikkaballapur-based activist Anjaneya Reddy said the government was defrauding the people and destroying the environment by taking up contractor-driven works like Yettinahole and KC Valley projects.

‘Probe KRIDL works’

Kempanna said the government has given projects worth Rs 25,000 crore to Karnataka Rural Infrastructure Development Limited but not even 20% of the work has been done. “We demand a separate inquiry into the matter,” he said.

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