Mithi river-widening project: Legislator demands CID probe

Following a series of reports published in Hindustan Times on the financial irregularities and project mismanagement by the civic body in the Mithi river-widening project, member of legislative council (MLC) Charan Singh Sapra demanded a CID inquiry into the project on Wednesday.

Following a series of reports published in Hindustan Times on the financial irregularities and project mismanagement by the civic body in the Mithi river-widening project, member of legislative council (MLC) Charan Singh Sapra demanded a CID inquiry into the project on Wednesday.

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Sapra addressed letters to civic chief Sitaram Kunte and chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, seeking an inquiry into the “large scale fraud” in the project to “estimate and recover the loss of the exchequer”. Earlier on Tuesday, Kunte decided to scrutinise the work undertaken so far and study all the reports related to Mithi, including the IIT report about the presence of hard rocks in the riverbed.

“The IIT report shows the total quantity of excavation in rock as 10.83 cubic metres,” wrote Sapra, adding, “Around 50% of the total cost of the project would be spent on excavating this large quantity of hard rocks.” Incidentally, the BMC, while floating tenders in 2007, had not mentioned the presence of any rocks in the bed.