NIT had planned to spend Rs300 crore from own funds for celebrations

The Times of India: Nagpur: Sunday, October 28, 2012.

Even as NIT is facing wrath of citizens and NGOs for allegedly splurging public money on its platinum jubilee celebrations, more details are tumbling out regarding its extravagant expenditure.

Citing RTI documents, young law student Ankita Shah, who has filed a PIL in the Bombay High Court, has alleged that NIT had originally planned to bear the entire expenditure of Rs300 crore from its own funds which it had termed as "excess". Even the NIT board of trustees had cleared the proposal.

Shah also raised a serious question mark as to why NIT had not declared the name of sponsors till filing of PIL a couple of days back. It was only when the petition was filed that NIT chairman Pravin Darade held a press conference to announce sponsors. She also alleged that name of main sponsor - CREDAI - was not mentioned in any advertisement till date and were declared only in press meet on the same day the PIL was filed. Darade refused to speak to TOI. "I have informed everything in the press meet and there is nothing more to say," he said.

He blamed TOI of unnecessarily promoting "vested interests" of Kamlesh Shah, Ankita's father, calling him a convict in case of warehouse collapse where six people were killed. "That person wants to settle personal scores with us," Darade said.

CREDAI secretary Anil Nair told TOI that he had apprised officials to include their name in the promotional activities. However, he was evasive on funds being allocated by their organization to NIT. "Since it is a noble cause involving general public, we have decided to sponsor it. Even in past, we had offered sponsorship for many such events," he said.

Nair also failed to give satisfactory answer on which date CREDAI had actually granted sponsorship to NIT. "I don't remember the date, but the decision was taken by our executive committee after long deliberations. The talks were going on since very long," he claimed.

Hindu Mahasabha's Mohan Karemore who had also served a legal notice to Darade, stated that NIT should have first developed its 572 and 1900 layouts along with gardens instead of 'wasting money' on such activities. He demanded high-level probe into entire affair.

Endorsing him, former ZP member Kunda Raut, who had earlier led a delegation of Zingabai Takli over lack of civic amenities, pointed out that the NIT had started regularizing 1,900 unauthorized layouts some 12 years ago and the area is among one of the localities but had not completed the process even now. In 2002, NIT recovered hefty amounts from Zingabai Takli residents as development charges but so far it failed to even provide basic amenities, she claimed, adding that almost 99% residents had paid the amount.