Scam was bared as friends fell out

Times of India: Nagpur: Saturday, 13 December 2014.

The irrigation scam would have remained under wraps had some old friends of a cosy contractors' club not had a falling-out and one of them squealed.

The cartel broke up after a contractor promised a Rs 56 crore order a plum deal nicknamed 'Chappan Bhog' after the lavish platter of sweets offered to gods in the Gosikhurd dam construction was denied the job. The work went to a joint venture between two Mumbai and Nagpur-based firms.

The aggrieved contractor explained to TOI, on the condition of anonymity, how the entire system had been gamed by contractors and politicians. "Contracts are fixed in the state's irrigation development corporations. In this case, I fixed a larger deal and was supposed to have got the Rs 56 crore contract in return. However, this Mumbai and Nagpur joint venture hijacked the contract, leaving me frustrated," he said.

The situation worsened when the contractor who bagged the deal also mocked him in front of senior VIDC officers, said the source. This triggered the entire chain of events.

The aggrieved contractor said he began collecting papers through RTI queries. Soon, a couple of bags full of documents were ready, which provided him with fodder against his rivals.

The source said he had also approached a senior politician, who had a say in this business, but he turned him away. "This left me determined to settle scores. By that time, a rivalry had developed between two senior officials of VIDC and this helped me get some more inside information," he said.

One more contractor in the cartel has confirmed that the entire episode started due to the dispute. "He had other works, but as things did not go as per his expectations, this contractor took such a step," said a businessman privy to the affair.

VIDC officials, who also endorsed this version, said it has ultimately led to a cleansing of the system. A section of officials in this organization, though, said the procedure of granting revised approvals to the project costs is a complex job. Each case has to be studied in depth and a wrongdoing cannot be determined straightaway.

The revised approvals on cost are granted after all the funds for the original estimate are exhausted.

Due to this, cost cannot be revised on a yearly basis, and there is point when the escalation has to be done at one go, as it happened in VIDC. However, none of that can rule out fudging of the estimates too, said a senior officer of the state's water resources department.