Alleging wide-scale misuse of public money in carrying out civic works by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (or the BBMP), the Bengaluru NavaNirmana Party (BNP) on Tuesday came out with what they call the ‘4g’ scam. This, as they found the BBMP and the state government to be misusing Section 4(g) of the Karnataka Transparency in Public Procurements (KTPP) Act to award contracts to Karnataka Rural Infrastructure Development Ltd (KRIDL) without any tender process.
BNP said that while Rs 10,018 crores worth of ward-level work has been executed or is under execution starting from 2015, Rs 4,721 crores worth of work has been given to KRIDL without any tender process.
Section 4(g) of the KTPP Act states: The provisions of Chapter II (Regulation of Procurement) shall not apply to procurement of goods and services in respect of specific procurements as may be notified by the government from time to time.”
Sidhartha Shetty, Padmanabha Nagar zonal leader of BNP, said, “We are calling this the Bengaluru 4g scam as Clause 4(g) in KTPPA was intended to give exceptions to the tendering process for specific type of procurements which might have some kind of specialization. However, this clause has been completely abused by successive BBMP Councils to give blanket exemptions to KRIDL to execute all types of projects including roads, drains, cameras, lights, etc.”
While KRIDL is a government agency, the allegation of misuse of money has been levelled as the KRIDL receives a commission ranging between 3% and 10% for subcontracting the work without providing any technical inputs.
Elaborating on their allegations, Srikanth Narasimhan, general secretary of BNP, said, “While the BBMP is anyway engaging with contractors, what is the point of wasting money on commissions for KRIDL which will again subcontract the work? Even if we consider that there is a flat commission rate of 3%, then also crores of rupees are given to the KRIDL which could have been otherwise used for civic works in the city.”
When there are already question marks about the existing tendering framework and the alleged nexus between politicians and contractors, the process of bypassing the tendering process creates a black box where there is no scope to find out if project costs have been inflated or not, said the party.
BNP, a newly-founded political outfit, is set to contest the upcoming civic polls in the city and claims that they are the only party in the country to solely focus on issues related to governing a city.