Mithi Scam- nth Part–new WTP scam In MCGM….
Yet another success for me after exposing desilting scam and authorities taking action….
Kudos to Mr Bhushan Gagrani and the Hon. CM Devendra Fadnavis who took the decision to recall the Mithi 3 project. My humble submission though is to please revisit the specification & the estimates before the tender is again published.
In the background of the Mithi investigation and the over confidence shown by Mr Akshay Gupta of confiding with every tom dick and harry as to how he is going to bag the project, I think it was the most obvious thing to be done. It seems, The papers retrieved from the office of Mr Ketan Kadam also exposed the relationship between Mr Kadam & Mr Gupta in framing the conditions of the tender in favour of few pump manufacturers. My friend, Mr Gupta yet remains confident of bagging the project based on his over generous donation to one political party. I would like to tell Mr Gupta to not be too over confident as there are yet reporters like me who are vigilant and shall expose from where and how his confidence comes from.
Grundfos, One of the international pump manufacturers has alleged a cartel run by Mr Ketan Kadam favouring pump operators. In one of the active bids at Panvel, International representative of Hassa pump has asked contractors to approach Vooder i.e. the company run by Jay Joshi & Ketan Kadam for the tie-up of the MOU. I feel EOW should call over all the main Indian as well as International representatives of all the pump manufacturers and investigate their relationship with Mr Kadam as alleged by Grundfoss. Also a sincere request to the EOW team to get details on estimate variation specific to the pumps in the case of Mithi 3 project.
While Ketan Kadam is bearing the brunt of framing the conditions to suit his preferred contractors, I am wondering from where does Mr Sriram Bhatt derive his confidence. In the recently published tender of 900 mld for Panjrapur Water Treatment Plant (WTP), Mr Sriram Bhatt has successfully achieved in framing the conditions to suit only one company that is ‘Veolia’. The preferred bidder shall be chosen on the merits on whom Veolia does a tie up with. People close to Mr Nitish Singh have already claimed success of this project even before the tenders are to be submitted. According to me, a towel manufacturing company who has dabbled in Infrastructure is all set to bag this contract thanks to the sincere efforts put in by Mr Bhatt and the engineering team at MCGM.
I hope Mr Prasad Lad raises this issue also like that of Mithi and pushes for an SIT on this subject of WTP as both the WTP i.e the earlier one of 2000 mld amounting to Rs. 4000 crores and the current one amounting to Rs.2000 crores are both inclined to go to the same company. The common link is that only one technology provider Veolia is getting qualified and surprisingly MCGM is not concerned. I think MCGM has become a vending machine for few contractors to withdraw money at the cost of the public exchequer.
I hope like Mithi 3, the said project of WTP is also recalled and restrictive clauses put up by liasoners are removed so that healthy competition is permitted and public money is saved.
Mumbaikars definitely deserve better.
Vikrant Meena Hemant Joshi.
