‘Fraudulent’ payment: 7 MCG officials on radar

Gurgaon: The Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon (MCG) has found that seven of its officials were involved in making a ‘fraudulent’ payment of around Rs 44 lakh to a private contractor. The contractor was given the work of laying a sewer line and construction of manholes along the Sheetla Mata Mandir road and in Palam Vihar in February 2019. An inquiry by MCG found that the contractor was paid twice for the same work.
The MCG commissioner has now written to the state urban local bodies (ULB) department seeking permission to recommend an FIR against the officials involved in the financial bungling and initiate criminal proceedings against them.
According to the letter, seven officials, including an executive engineer, one junior engineer, one assistant engineer, the former chief accounts officer, former section officer and two accountants, were involved in the transaction, which resulted in a financial loss to MCG.
The work was awarded to the contractor through a work order February 14, 2019 by then executive engineer-2. The contractor was later given Rs 44.5 lakh after the payment was approved. The executive engineer allegedly submitted another bill on November 7 for the same work. Another payment of Rs 43.8 lakh was made the same day, allegedly after verification by the engineering, accounts and audit branches of the MCG.
The former executive engineer did not respond to calls and messages despite repeated attempts.
“The matter came to light in September this year when the contractor informed MCG that he had received double payment. He disclosed it only after an audit of MCG’s accounts began. Even though he has returned the money, it doesn’t mean that he or the officials involved didn’t commit fraud. When I came to know about it, I wrote to the ULB department seeking strict action against the officials involved,” commissioner Mukesh Kumar Ahuja told TOI.
RTI activist SK Sharma had sought the report of the inquiry conducted in the matter. It found that the file put up for approval of the second payment had several discrepancies. The work order didn’t bear a dispatch number and the payment was made without the required documentation in an “extraordinary haste”, stated the report. “A few top officials were involved in the fraud, but they haven’t been named in the inquiry report,” Sharma said.