Maharashtra contractors to flood top ministers’ offices with calls over ₹86,000 crore dues

Mumbai: Contractors across Maharashtra will launch a statewide phone campaign from Friday to demand clearance of ₹86,000 crore in pending dues, with calls planned to the offices of chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and deputy chief ministers Eknath Shinde and Sunetra Pawar over three days

Mumbai: Contractors across Maharashtra will launch a statewide phone campaign from Friday to demand clearance of ₹86,000 crore in pending dues, with calls planned to the offices of chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and deputy chief ministers Eknath Shinde and Sunetra Pawar over three days.

On Thursday, the Maharashtra State Contractors Association (MSCA) asked its members to begin calling the ministers’ offices as part of the campaign. According to the schedule issued by the association, Fadnavis’s office will be targeted on Friday, followed by Shinde’s on Monday and Pawar’s on Tuesday. The association’s leadership has also shared two landline numbers for each office.

“Payments of around ₹86,000 crore to contractors across departments in Maharashtra have been pending for the past one-and-a-half years. During this time, 10 contractors have died by suicide, yet nothing has moved,” said Milind Bhosale, president of the MSCA.

The Public Works Department accounts for around ₹27,000 crore of the outstanding dues, while approximately ₹38,000 crore is pending under the Jal Jeevan Mission. The Rural Development Department owes contractors around ₹3,500 crore, the Tribal Development Department ₹12,000 crore and the Tourism Department ₹2,509 crore. Dues are also pending with the Water Resources, Water Conservation and Urban Development departments, among others, the association said.

The MSCA, the State Engineers Association and the Maharashtra State Water Supply Contractors Association have held several protests, sit-ins and marches, besides meeting ministers of the departments concerned at Mantralaya. However, these efforts have failed to secure the release of payments, the associations said.

Bhosale said the MSCA had also written several letters to the chief minister and both deputy chief ministers, seeking a meeting with a delegation, but had received no response.

With Diwali approaching, contractors are pressing for their bills to be cleared. “No ministers or secretaries are picking up the phone, and no one is showing the courage to answer us. In this serious situation, we will now try to wake them up. Around 300,000 contractors across Maharashtra will call the top ministers’ offices and ask whether they intend to pay our bills,” Bhosale said.