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SDMC lost Rs 1,660 crore due to delayed projects and under recovery of tax dues, says audit report
The south corporation is already running a budgetary deficit of Rs678 crore. In the last financial year (2018-19), the civic body claimed to have earned Rs. 3,219 crore and incurred an expenditure of Rs. 3,897 crore.
The South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) has lost at least Rs. 1,660 crore between financial years 2013-14 and 2016-17 in cost overruns due to delayed projects, outstanding property tax and unrecovered licence fees, an internal report by its chief auditor, Vinita Mishra, has stated.
The south corporation is already running a budgetary deficit of Rs678 crore. In the last financial year (2018-19), the civic body claimed to have earned Rs. 3,219 crore and incurred an expenditure of Rs. 3,897 crore.
The report was tabled in a meeting of the south civic body’s standing committee on Thursday. Standing committee chairperson, Bhupinder Gupta, said, “We will go through this report. Response will be sought from each department on the alleged lapses and financial loss, and action taken against officers on the basis of that.”
The audit report mentioned some prominent infrastructure projects of the south civic body which missed several deadlines. “Delay in completion of projects such as multilevel underground car parkings at New Friends Colony, Jungpura and Kalkaji not only resulted in cost overrun (Rs. 14.27 cr.) and time overrun (more than 7 years), but also deprived the public from utilising the facilities,” the report stated.
It also highlighted the “white elephant” project of SDMC, the Purnima Sethi Multispecialty Hospital at Kalkaji, which the corporation is unable to run due to paucity of funds and plans to transfer it to the Safdarjung Hospital of the central government.
“Delay in completion of the 100-bed Purnima Sethi Multispecialty Hospital at Kalkaji resulted in a cost overrun (of Rs.32.08 crore) and time overrun (more than 10 years),” the report stated.
The report also listed the expenditure of Rs 26.90 crore incurred on the covering of a drain running from Pushp Vihar to Defence Colony as “wasteful, because the purpose of covering of nallah, providing parking/road cum parking was defeated.”
It also mentioned outstanding arrears of property tax to the tune of Rs.1177.47 crore besides “short recovery/deposit of property tax due to wrong application of rates amounting to Rs. 4.50 crore” as well.
The report also said that “licence fee to the tune of Rs.4.83 cr. is outstanding,” and “undue favour has been given to an advertiser leading to non-recovery of licence fee of up to Rs. 4.47 cr”.
The report also highlighted that non-recovery of outstanding dues of licence fee from the commercial units (Rs.10.63 crore) and non-reconciliation of funds released by pension cell for disbursement to pensioners of MCD/SDMC (Rs 366.16 crore) has also bled the corporation.
Leader of the House Kamaljeet Sehrawat said, “We cannot arrive at any judgement or indict any officer right now. The Standing committee members will discuss each point raised in the over-200 page report in the next meeting and see what slips may have occurred.”
