A day after senior BJP leader Eknath Khadse raised suspicions of a scam in the government’s contract to kill rats in the Mantralaya, BJP spokesperson Ram Kadam claimed that the figure 3,19,400 was not the number of rats killed, but the tablets used in the operation.
However, Mr. Kadam could not reveal the exact number of rats that had been killed. Right To Information (RTI) queries revealed that two contracts each worth ₹2.40 lakh had been inked with Vinayak Majoor Sahakari Sanstha and a rate of ₹1.50 was fixed for killing one rat. The documents obtained through RTI queries included a number of letters written by BJP MLA Charan Waghmare drawing the attention of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis towards the alleged scam.
A letter read, “As per the work order dated May 9, 2016, the officers in the Mantralaya have shown that 3,19,400 rats were killed in two months and have collected money for it. But there has been no record of which poison was used, who collected the dead rats and where they were dumped. It is clear that the officers who claimed to be honest and transparent were actually minting money.”
