4 engineers face vigilance probe for ‘favours’ in civic work tenders

GURUGRAM: A vigilance probe has been initiated against at least four executive engineers of MCG for alleged fraud in the allotment of tenders for various civic works, according to sources.
“The state vigilance bureau has already started the questioning of the engineers and the process will be followed by a submission of the report,” a source said on Saturday.

The inquiry comes in the wake of the MCG Contractors Welfare Association shooting a letter to the chief minister, alleging the engineers within the corporation have been allotting tenders to their “favourite contractors” at unreasonably low prices. “These engineers are hand in glove with the contractors and after allotting the tenders, they also take cuts from the money that comes from the project,” said Anant Ram, a city-based contractor who is one of the complainants.

The MCG employees tell their favourite contractors to quote extremely low rates for the tenders so that no other contractor can be at that rate and the project is automatically allotted to their chosen contractor, according to the complainants.

And payments for these projects are often done by making duplicate bills and the commissions of the MCG employees go as high as 50% in many cases, they claim.

“The tenders are fraudulently being allotted to these handful contractors at rates 65% below the actual rates. If it takes Rs 10 lakh to build a room, how can it be built at Rs 4 lakh, the only explanation is that either the work is of sub-standard quality or it was never done on the ground,” said Anant.

In their complaint on the CM window, the contractors have further alleged that most of these tenders are just allotted and the work is never actually done.

Corruptiuon charges against MCG officials are on the rise. Recently someone had written to the CM, complaining about the cash withdrawals made by the chief accounts officer of the corporation. Prior to that, MCG employees hogged limelight for their involvement in the property tax scam. Even the enforcement wing of the corporation has been highly criticised for corruption.

While MCG commissioner Yashpal Yadav couldn’t be reached for a comment, chief engineer N D Vashisht said he wasn’t aware of any such development.