A social audit of 25 civil works of BBMP has found that most are incomplete and of low quality, and bills are inflated.
The audit was conducted by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) after details of pending bills were put up on the BBMP’s website recently.
BBMP administrator T M Vijay Bhaskar had put on hold payment of all pending bills amounting to Rs. 2,455 crore as on March 31, 2015. During the audit at Neelasandra where bills of Rs. 2 crore have been raised for renovation and repair of slum dwellers’ houses, AAP volunteers found “no evidence of any major renovation or repair in recent times”. However, BBMP has cleared payments running into Rs. 1.2 crore while Rs 81.34 lakh is pending.
In another instance, a contractor raised a bill of Rs 50 lakh for drilling five borewells while another of Rs. 41 lakh was raised to put up a fence and fix a gate at a park.
The party wants the BBMP Administrator to constitute an independent team comprising retired government engineers and those employed in the private sector along with representatives from civil society to audit all projects, especially those estimated at Rs. 10 lakh and above. It wants bills to be cleared only after the expert committee submits its report.
