BWSSB suspends 13 officials on graft charge

“During the pandemic, the officials and workers from Navodaya Service Centre, a consultancy that provides manpower to the BWSSB, used the water charges, collected in cash, and did not submit the funds to the BWSSB,” an official said, seeking anonymity.

The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) suspended 13 officials on Wednesday for alleged misappropriation of ₹7 crore, paid by the citizens in the form of water bills, people in the know of the matter said on Thursday.

The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) suspended 13 officials for alleged misappropriation of ₹7 crore (Agencies/Representative use)

“During the pandemic, the officials and workers from Navodaya Service Centre, a consultancy that provides manpower to the BWSSB, used the water charges, collected in cash, and did not submit the funds to the BWSSB,” an official said, seeking anonymity.

However, the accused had “created fake documents to show that the bills were deposited in the bank”, the official added. The issue came to the light during the internal audit of the water board held in December, where it was found that the water bills collected in the form of cash, demand draft and cheque was not deposited to the bank.

Those employees suspended have been identified as Bharath Kumar G S, R Srinivas, Vishwanath K, C Somashekar, B Nagendra, C Nagaraju, Sachin Patel, Ramappa Madivalara, Sneha V, Bhimashankar, Geeta M, N Rudresh and S Yogesh, an official from BWSSB said.

The board had constituted three special audit committees to scrutinize if the amount collected via water bills was credited to the BWSSB account and to comprehensively “identify the amount misused by the outsourced employees”. Based on this an internal audit report was submitted, and the employees responsible for embezzlement were suspended with immediate effect.

Last month, the Bommanahalli police had arrested nine people, including a revenue manager at the BWSSB, and eight others, including meter readers and employees of outsourcing firm Navodaya Service Centre in the water meter scam.

The police on December 23 had arrested Nagaveni, a revenue manager at the BWSSB, based on evidence that she had given the login ID and password of the ‘SAJALA’ website to an agency staff and assisted in the fraud, said an official.

During the probe, it was found that they created receipts and made false entries that claimed the funds had been transferred to the department’s bank account. It was suspected that many more employees of the board were involved in the scam and further investigation is on, said the police.