The Bengaluru Navanirmana Party (BNP), on Monday, took the civic body to task over infrastructure projects alleging widespread opacity in the process.
“A total of 63,629 projects worth ₹21,653 crore have been approved in the last five years. Of these, only 28,314 projects worth ₹10,018 crore have been executed or are under execution. Of the projects executed, almost 50% have been given to KRIDL without any tendering process whatsoever,” claimed Sanjay Mehrotra, head of analytics, BNP.
Over the past five years, over ₹4,700 crore worth of projects have been handed over by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to the Karnataka Rural Infrastructure Development Ltd. (KRIDL). This is 47.1% of all approved projects in the BBMP, he said.
Stating that KRIDL, though a government enterprise, did not have any expertise, Srikanth Narasimhan, general secretary, BNP, charged that the 4(g) clause of the Karnataka Transparency in Public Procurement Act had been misused. This, he alleged, had resulted in public funds being mismanaged and unaccounted for.
He also said that BBMP pays nearly 10% as commission for every project to KRIDL, which sub-contracts the work. “This means there is a lot of scope for corruption and misgovernance. This is a gross violation of norms, process and basic principles of governance,” he alleged.
Mr. Narasimhan said citizens should be made aware of the mismanagement of public funds and added that BNP was looking to enter the fray in the next polls to the BBMP council. Stating that the party was looking to challenge this legally, he also said it was time for citizens to ask questions and vote against corrupt politicians.