BHOPAL: At the demand of people’s representatives, the state government had announced that the course of Khan River would be diverted before Simhastha. It is now almost 11 months since the conclusion of Simhastha in May 2016 but the work is yet to be completed. And what is shocking is that that the water resources department has made full payment to the contractor.
This has been revealed in the CAG report for the year ending March 31, 2016. Khan River joins Kshipra near Ujjain and the objective of diverting its flow was to prevent the pollutants carried by the river from entering the holy river. The work, however, could not be completed till Simhastha, as envisaged. The CAG report said the work was continuing till June 2016. And it is still incomplete. This issue may snowball into a major political controversy.
According to CAG report, the diversion project was approved in September 2014 and the Rs-75cr contract was awarded in November 2014. The work was to be completed within a year. However, while the project languished, a total of Rs 72.76cr was paid to the contractor by April 2016.
The CAG has also objected to the amount spent on the project. The CC pipes used in the project were much costlier than the same pipes used by the same contractor in other projects. The contractor had also dug up soil up to a much greater depth than provided in the contract. The government should have realised a royalty of Rs 3.26cr from the contractor for the extra digging, which it did not do.
A stretch of railway line was also to be dug up for the project. The contract said payment for the same would be made to the railways by the water resources department and realised from the contractor. The department duly paid Rs 41 lakh to railways but did not realise it from the contractor, thus giving undue benefit to him.
The department also obliged the contractor by paying Rs 50 lakh for temporary acquisition of land. The Congress and the BJP have been trying to put the government in the dock on the issue. BJP MLAs Babulal Gaur and Mohan Yadav had moved a call-attention motion in Vidhan Sabha on the issue of pollution in Khan.
