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Informist, Friday, Oct. 18, 2024

NEW DELHI – A month ahead of the Maharashtra Assembly elections, the Congress party on Friday alleged that the state government led by the Mahayuti alliance--comprising Bharatiya Janata Party, Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (Ajit Pawar)--has awarded road projects to some companies at higher prices, costing taxpayers at least INR 109.03 billion. The party alleged that tenders were awarded in return for funding political campaigns through electoral bonds. 

The Congress alleged that several norms were changed to favour specific companies in awarding tenders for various highway projects, such as Virar-Alibaug Multimodal Corridor, Pune Ring Road, etc. It said that as many as eight road projects of 107.72 kilometres with tunnelling work of 13.84 km were awarded to companies which placed higher bids of INR 209.90 billion. The Congress claimed that the fair price to award the tenders was INR 100.87 billion. The party, however, didn't name the companies involved in the alleged scam.

"The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation Limited had a rule that one bidder would get up to two packages only, but this rule was changed by defining eight projects as tunnel projects with different qualification conditions. This was done to award most of the package to a few entities," Congress leader Pawan Khera said in a press conference on Friday.

"...in most of the packages, the tunnel work is less than 10% except only in Pune Ring Road W4 with 77% tunnel scope. However, the pre-qualification criteria were changed by showing the tunnel as major work. Further, these eight projects were also removed from the criteria of a maximum of two packages to each bidder providing special treatment to these companies," the Congress said in a release.

The party further said that in previous projects, such as the ‘Missing Link and Mumbai Nagpur’ project, where the pre-qualification criteria for tunnel diameter and length were kept at 50% for diameter and 20% for length in convergence, which is what the National Highway Authority of India, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, and Border Road Organisation, and others do. "The corporation kept the tunnel length criteria at just 6%, i.e. 250 meters which matches the favoured company's previous experience of 290 meters of Mumbai Nagpur Expressway," the party said.

The Congress said that the corporation invited requests for qualification for the Pune Ring Road project in April 2023. A total of 28 companies submitted applications. However, 18 companies qualified for the next round. In July 2023, one of these 18 entities donated electoral bonds. In January this year, the corporation received 26 bids from 12 firms for the highway projects. The lowest bid for each package's construction was significantly higher than the corporation's estimates, the Congress said, adding that the corporation gave contracts to these companies at higher costs instead of cancelling the process and asking for new bids.

Khera said that one entity was allotted four packages instead of two. He slammed the BJP for allegedly running an extortion racket. "...13% of electoral bonds were received from Maharashtra. There was a time when there was a D company, a crime syndicate founded by Dawood Ibrahim. Now, it's B (BJP) Company," Khera said.  End

Reported by Kuldeep Singh

Edited by Tanima Banerjee

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