From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network
Bengaluru, Sep 22: Bengaluru NavaNirmana Party (BNP), a newly formed political party with an exclusive focus on Bengaluru and Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), has alleged that a mega scam in the civic body involving crores of rupees over the last few years.
Sanjay Mehrotra head of analytics for BNP, said, “We have done a deep analysis of projects approved and undertaken by BBMP at the ward level across the 198 wards over the last five years. A total of 63,629 projects have been approved in the last five years with a total approved value of Rs 21,653 crore. Out of these, only 28,314 projects have been executed or are under execution with a total value of Rs 10,018 crore. Out of these projects executed, almost 50% of these projects worth Rs 4,721 crore have been given to a single contractor without any tendering process whatsoever.”
Subbu Hegde treasurer of BNP said, “There has always been a suspicion about money siphoned off through contracts, but this is completely shocking, where most of the projects do not even go through a tender! Karnataka Rural Infrastructure Development Ltd. (KRIDL) is the agency that has been bagging these contracts and they also get paid a commission of almost 10% on every project! Thousands of crores of projects given to a single contractor without any tendering process and with a commission, leaves a high degree of scope for corruption and misgovernance. This is a gross violation of norms, process and basic principles of governance!”
Sowmya Raghavan head of research for BNP said, “This has been enabled by a provision in the Karnataka Transparency in Public Procurements Act (KTPPA) called 4(g) which states – The provisions of Chapter II shall not apply to procurement of goods and services in respect of specific procurements as may be notified by the Government from time to time.”
Sidhartha Shetty, Padmanabha Nagar zonal leader of BNP said, “We are calling this the Bengaluru 4g scam as Clause 4(g) in KTPPA was intended to give exceptions to the tendering process for a specific type of procurements which might have some kind of specialization. However, this clause has been completely abused by successive BBMP councils to give blanket exemptions to KRIDL to execute all types of projects including roads, drains, cameras, lights etc.”
Arun Mahendran head of technology for BNP said, “We have the above data categorized ward-wise so that Bengaluru citizens can see how much of work has been done in their respective wards and how much has gone unaccounted like this. The 4g scam section on BNP website www.nammabnp.org has the provision for citizens to download and see the details for their respective wards!”
Srikanth Narasimhan general secretary of BNP said, “It is time for citizens of Bengaluru to understand how our hard-earned money is completely mismanaged and goes unaccounted through such brazen acts by elected representatives. BNP is looking to get good citizens elected as corporators to the BBMP Council and makes a solemn promise to Bengaluru that it will fight to bring transparency and process to BBMP with a view to stopping the corruption, loot and misgovernance, which has been rampant in BBMP.”