The Karnataka High Court on Monday directed the Technical Vigilance Cell under the Commissioner (TVCC) of the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike to submit a report within 45 days on the outcome of the ongoing scrutiny of civil works in 25 zones on the lines of the one it conducted in three zones, Malleswaram, Gandhinagar and Rajarajeshwarinagar, which had unearthed the multi-crore bogus bill scam.
A Division Bench, comprising Chief Justice Vikramajit Sen and Justice Aravind Kumar, issued the direction while hearing a batch of public interest litigation petitions seeking inquiry by the Criminal Investigation Department or the Central Bureau of Investigation or other independent agencies into all the works carried out in the 28 engineering divisions of the BBMP.
During the hearing, counsel for BBMP said that three more Chief Engineers have been added to the TVCC to hasten the process of scrutiny of 27,010 works, of which 1,419 files concerned capital works. Counsel for the State said that the government would decide on the nature of the probe soon after getting TVCC’s preliminary report.
However, counsel for the petitioners claimed there was not much progress in CID’s investigation of the three divisions and that the agency was still writing to the BBMP to hand over the files instead of seizing them.
The Bench said that it found no reason to suspect the TVCC’s independence, gave it 45 days and adjourned hearing by two months.
