E-Paper
J&K administration denies any scam in Jal Jeevan Mission implementation
Addressing a press conference in Srinagar, jal shakti department additional chief secretary Shaleen Kabra said that there has been strict adherence to general financial rules and e-tendering in the UT since 2019
The Jammu and Kashmir administration on Wednesday denied any scam or financial irregularity in implementation of Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) in the Union territory.
Addressing a press conference in Srinagar, jal shakti department additional chief secretary Shaleen Kabra said that there has been strict adherence to general financial rules and e-tendering in the UT since 2019.
“There has been a lot of news regarding JJM in the newspapers for some time now. In particular, it has been mentioned that a scam of ₹13,000 crore is involved. I would like to point out that the actual expenditure under the mission is ₹3,088 crore. Out of this, ₹2,500 crore has been spent since August 2020. It is for you to judge the level of truth in such allegations,” he said.
There have been allegations of ₹13,000 crore scam in JJM. It was first flagged by Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Ashok Parmar and later picked up by political parties. Opposition parties, including Congress and Peoples Democratic Party have targeted the administration, including Lieutenant General Manoj Sinha and Union government for punishing Parmar with transfers instead of inquiring into the alleged scam.
The JJM scheme aims to provide potable drinking water in taps to all rural homes by 2024.
“Since 2019 and with regard to JJM, not even a single allotment of works or procurement of any of the pipe material has been done without tendering,” Kabra said.
In his complaint to Union home secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla in July, Parmar had alleged that the chief engineer of the Jal Shakti department’s Kashmir division had floated tenders to supply centrifugally cast (or spun) ductile iron pipes for ₹690 crore based on an existing contract under a non-JJM scheme. The tender was floated in January 2022 and the orders were placed in June 2022 under non-JJM specification. In another complaint to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC), Parmar alleged that L-G Sinha and chief secretary Arun Kumar Mehta had harassed him due to their caste prejudice.
“Every allotment order which has been made, and there are 6,600, is on the department’s website,” he said.
“The scheme will have a number of works. There are 3,300 schemes or 6,600 components here. While administrative approval has been granted for the entire scheme, none of them go to a level where the contract committee, headed by an administrative secretary, would come into picture,” Kabra added.
“It is all done through electronic medium. Let me assure you that every payment of ₹3,088 crore that has been made has been done after approval and has been uploaded,” he said.
