Bangalore: CAG attacks CM's grant of Rs 100 crore each to city corporations

From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Bangalore

Bangalore, Jun 6: The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has found loopholes in the estimation of works under Chief Minister’s special grant of Rs 100 crore each to seven city corporations and said they had been prepared without proper investigation and also split up to avoid obtaining prior sanction from higher authorities.

The CAG in its report on the financial grants to Local Bodies for the year ended March 2012, which was tabled in the Legislative Assembly on Thursday pinpointed that road works have received a lop-sided priority in action plans prepared by City Corporations.

While the proportion of road works in the action plans of Davanagere and Hubli-Dharwad civic bodies was 59 per cent and 68 per cent respectively, it was 58 per cent in Bellary.

The CAG also found that improvement of parks (Rs 10.94 crore) and improvement of village roads (Rs 5.71 crore) had been included in the action plans of Davanagere and Hubli-Dharwad city corporations respectively, though not permissible by the criteria fixed by the Government.

It also pointed out that no data was provided regarding prioritization of the works in seven city corporations.

The government had approved (August 2008) release of Rs 100 crore each to the seven city corporations over a period of two years during 2008-09 and 2009-10 to assist the city corporation’s to take development works in the respective cities as emerging growth centres and to reduce the pressure on Bangalore city.

The tendering process lacked transparency as controls prescribed for ensuring competitive bidding had been overridden and contracts had been awarded to ineligible agencies, the CAG said pointing out that the contract management was ineffective as many items of work had been executed in disregard of the Indian Roads Congress guidelines, without justification.

Payments to contractors had been made in several instances without following due procedures resulting in excess expenditure of Rs 1.88 crore, it said.

A committee headed by the Minister-in-charge of the district was required to prepare an action plan for implementing works designed to deliver important municipal services.

As the committees only reacted to the recommendations coming from the city corporations, there was no clear articulated minimum threshold measure for the cities' growth expected to be achieved by works to be taken up, the CAG report said.