HC orders CAG probe into MCD toilet project

One more Commonwealth Games-related project has come under the scanner of the Comptroller and Auditor General — the erstwhile Municipal Corporation of Delhi's (MCD) fancy toilets.

One more Commonwealth Games-related project has come under the scanner of the Comptroller and Auditor General — the erstwhile Municipal Corporation of Delhi's (MCD) fancy toilets.

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The 218-air conditioned complexes were to have a toilet on the ground floor, a eating joint, a flower outlet and a shop of a branded product on its first floor.

Three months after the MCD decided to scrap the Rs. 250-crore project, the Delhi High Court on Tuesday ordered a CAG probe into tenders floated for the construction of 216 such toilets.

The MCD dropped the project, admitting that necessary clearances had not been taken. In an affidavit filed in the court, the MCD had said the land on which the proposed toilets were to be constructed were not owned by it and so no third party interest like commercialisation by private parties can be permitted on them.

Though 218 of them were planned, only eight could be built due to protests from RWAs and traders as most chosen spots were on market parking areas or parks.

A Bench headed by Justice S K Kaul said: "We fail to appreciate how a tender could have been floated without examining the validity of such a tender. A question arises whether any responsibility has been fixed as MCD cannot be permitted to merely state that they have scrapped the tender".

The CAG will probe how MCD conceived a project against the master plan, permitted land use and without proper building plan and who were the officers behind floating of the tender.

The court was hearing a PIL filed by the N-Block Welfare Association of Greater Kailash-1 seeking demolition of two toilet blocks built in the parking area of their local market.

It's lawyer Ashok Sethi said: "The whole exercise in the name of the Games was a clear attempt to hand over prime land across Delhi for commercial misuse in the guise of providing toilets. It is nothing but a clear violation of the Delhi Master Plan 2021, which found parking space scarce in Delhi.”