The Maharashtra Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee report, demanding an inquiry against the Public Works Department headed by Chhagan Bhujbal has become a major embarrassment to the Nationalist Congress Party politician as he is preparing to contest his first Lok Sabha election.
The report, tabled on Friday, has blamed the department for extending undue benefits to a contractor and causing the exchequer Rs. 5,000-crore loss, and recommended an inquiry by a Special Investigation Team and the Central Bureau of Investigation.
But the Minister said: “The report claiming Rs. 5,000-crore benefit to the private developer is not only exaggerated but absolutely wrong.” It was an attempt to malign his image, he said in a statement.
The PAC, headed by the BJP’s Girish Bapat, scrutinised three projects awarded by the PWD to a private contractor for construction of a Regional Transport Office (RTO) in a Mumbai suburb, the State guest house in the city and Maharashtra Sadan in New Delhi. The PWD gave the developer around 4 lakh square feet but he built the RTO under 73,000 square feet and thus made profits worth 55 per cent of the project cost, which is 20 per cent more than permitted, the report said.
The contractor was then given extra saleable land at Andheri to complete the RTO building.
“The PWD did not call for tenders before handing over the land to the developer,” the report said.
The guest house is still incomplete seven years after construction began.
The PAC has called for third-party audit of the work on Maharashtra Sadan.
