The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has found that estimation of works under Chief Minister’s special grant of Rs 100 crore each to seven city corporations had been prepared without proper investigation and also been split up to avoid need for sanction by higher authorities.
Road works have received a lop-sided priority in actions plans prepared by City Corporations (CCs). While the proportion of road works in the actions plans of Davangere and Hubli-Dharwad was 59 per cent and 68 per cent respectively, it was 58 per cent in Bellary.
Audit also found that improvement of parks (Rs 10.94) crore and improvement of village roads (Rs 5.71 crore) had been included in the action plans of Davangere and Hubli-Dharwad corporations respectively, though not permissible by the criteria fixed by the government.
“Audit failed to find any data which had been used to prioritise the works in seven city corporations.”The government had approved (August 2008) release of Rs 100 crore to each of the seven city corporations over a period of two years during 2008-09 and 2009-10 to promote these cities as emerging growth centres and to reduce the pressure on Bangalore city.
Payments
The tendering process lacked transparency as controls prescribed for ensuring competitive bidding had been overridden and contracts had been awarded to ineligible agencies.
The contract management was ineffective as many items of work had been executed in disregard of the Indian Roads Congress guidelines, without justification. Payments to contractors had been made in several instances without following due procedures resulting in excess expenditure of Rs 1.88 crore, it said.
It said the annual accounts prepared by urban local bodies were not certified by the Chartered Accountants for the years 2008-12.
The budgets prepared by the urban local bodies were not realistic as evidenced by savings in both receipts and payments vis-a-vis budget provisions.
