Tainted contractors won’t be paid

MUMBAI: Fearing a backlash over the proposal of releasing payment to tainted contractors involved in the recently unearthed road scam, the Brihanmumbai Municipal

MUMBAI: Fearing a backlash over the proposal of releasing payment to tainted contractors involved in the recently unearthed road scam, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided not to pay the dues until the police investigation is over.

HT Image

Last week, the proposal was sent to municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta.

According to sources, Mehta decided to stop the payment till the probe is over.

The proposal to release the payment was moved by the roads department according to which officials had decided to hold back double the amount of scam and release the rest.

HT had reported first (on June 10) about the controversial decision of releasing the payment to the tainted contractors.

The civic body had moved a proposal to hold back Rs 28crore out of the total contract cost of Rs 352crore and pay the rest to the contractors citing technical grounds. However, there were major discrepancies in the BMC inquiry report, as the civic body came up with two different figures of loss because of the road scam.

In its inquiry report, the team pointed out a loss of Rs 14crore of taxpayers’ money because of shoddy repair work and use of inferior materials. But contradicting its own report, while filing an FIR against six contractors, the civic body mentioned the scam of Rs 11crore.

A senior civic official said, “After the proposal was critiA senior civic official cised, the civic chief thought of not taking any decision until the probe ends. The road department officials had proposed it after contractors made a hue and cry over the release of payments.”

The civic body had assured that it would file a civil suit against the six contractors to recover the Rs352 crore.

Meanwhile, in the second stage of road inquiry, the civic body completed taking trial pits of 200 roads.

The road samples will be sent for testing because of the previous shoddy job that came to light post the scam was discovered.

According to sources, this time, most of the samples have thrown better results initially and very less percentage of substandard materials were found. The final report will come in a month.