DH Exclusive: No quality check on BBMP work for 3 years

In a shocking revelation, public works worth thousands of crores executed in the last three years were never certified for quality. Engineers who were supposed to take the necessary steps did not bother to check the quality despite government orders.

Despite several complaints of poor quality of work in projects like white-topping, TenderSure and road-widening carried out by the previous Congress and coalition governments, engineers did not check their quality.

The Urban Development Department on October 12 this year issued a show-cause notice to BBMP engineer-in-chief (EIC) M R Venkatesh seeking an explanation why no quality check was done for the civic work.

“There were several previous orders from the government to take care of works and supervise them to ensure quality. Though you were the authority to implement the works, no quality check was done,” the notice said.

The notice further stated, “Progress review meetings were not held, spot inspections not conducted, and no report on the work was submitted to the government despite media reports of sub-standard civic work. Though there was a provision for setting up a Quality Monitoring System (QMS), you handed over the quality checks to lower-level officials.”

The BBMP awarded Rs 7,300 crore for more than 2,400 works from the action plans in 2016-17 and Rs 2,491 crore for more than 1,300 works in 2017-18 crore during the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government and Rs 8,105 crore for 2,800 works from the 2018-19 action plan by the H D Kumaraswamy-led coalition government.

A BBMP official said, “The EIC did not hold even a single meeting or conduct a spot inspection of public works amid complaints of irregularities in their implementation. The government has held him responsible for the mess and sought an explanation. It is shocking that there was no quality check on works all these years despite complaints by citizens and activists. Quality checks would have prevented irregularities and poor quality of work,” he said.

CM orders probe

Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa has ordered a probe into all the works that were carried out by the previous government. He has now ordered an Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) probe against alleged irregularities in implementation of traffic engineering works in BBMP limits based on the report by Technical Vigilance Cell under Commissioner (TVCC).