For BMC, all roads turn back to ‘con’tractors

For BMC, all roads turn back to ‘con’tractors
Civic body allots Rs 150cr contracts back to discredited contractors, snubbing Lokayukta’s notice.

The tainted ones, like the potholes, are here to stay.

Despite receiving a notice by Maharashtra Lokayukta ML Tahaliyani, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has allotted roadwork to the tune of nearly Rs 150 crore to tainted contractors.

Bulldozing the opposition Congress’s protests, the civic standing committee led by the ruling Shiv Sena approved the contracts on Wednesday, without so much as a thorough discussion.

The Lokayukta had earlier this month issued a notice to BMC boss Ajoy Mehta asking him to submit a report on why BMC had appointed contractors who colluded with each other to ensure that the highest bidder among them, rather than the lowest, bagged the contracts.

In its sustained coverage of the issue, this paper has exposed such ‘fixed’ contracts on prior occasions (July 24 and August 1).

It was in wake of this that the Lokayukta had, on March 1, issued the notice. Former Congress MP Gurudas Kamat, too, had complained to Tahaliyani, alleging corruption in the contracts allotment, prompting him to seek an answer from BMC.

But the BMC, which had until March 14 to reply to the notice, has violated the deadline. The roads department has been asked to look into the Lokayukta’s notice, is all civic chief Mehta offered.

“The BMC is not bothered about even the Lokayukta’s notice. It must answer why the work was allotted to a tainted contractor. It must tell us why it took a U-turn after six months,” said Congress corporator Devendra Amberkar. After Opposition uproar over the ‘fixing’ of contracts and Mirror’s corresponding reportage in July-August, BMC had voided the Rs 150 crore contracts to re-float the tender. But in the meantime, the contractors moved the Procurement Redressal Committee (PRC) and got a ruling in their favour, so the BMC turned about to hand the contracts back to them.

By knuckling to the contractors, Amberkar said, “The BMC has caused itself a loss of over Rs 30 crore. This clearly exposes the nexus between the BMC officials and contractors.”

A senior civic official said that after the contractors moved the PRC, the body directed the corporation to give them the contracts. “The PRC ruled BMC had given contracts to lone bidders in the past, so there was no reason to scrap them,” he said. “Also, we were running out of time so we had to allot them,” he added.

SVR Srinivas, additional municipal commissioner in charge of roads, was not available for comment.

The complicity among contractors was unearthed when the BMC finalised three contracts worth over Rs 150 crore for building roads in the eastern suburbs. Seven firms participated in the bids, but when it came to submitting the paperwork, all except the respective highest bidders rendered themselves ‘ineligible’ with flawed documents. So the BMC was forced to award the contracts to the only remaining contractors.

The contracts were bagged by Ms Shantinath Roadways and Ms Speco Infrastructure. The others in the fray— Ms KR Construction, Ms RK Madhani, Ms ME Infra and Ms Bitcon India — rendered themselves ineligible, on purpose, to make it good for their cronies. They are all registered with BMC.

Notably, Madhani, ousted from the three contracts in question for not submitting registration certificate of one of their dumper trucks, bagged another contract that was worth Rs 100 crore.