BMC & MMRDA–What a MESS!
Last week a letter has been written by the BMC Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal to Chief Secretary Sanjay Kumar in regard to transferring the ambitious project of 5000 bedded Infectious diseases at Mulund in regard to citing various reasons on to the State Government. This is no less than a confession statement, in my views. Me Culpa! (I am guilty?) the letter is eloquent testimony of goof ups and how the whole hospital money scam unfolded and should become a subject matter of probe instead of allowing a decent burial to a mind boggling scandal which was aborted only after this blog exposed the murky details. But finally, the project has been shelved and readers our money in tune of Rs. 4000 crores is saved.
In the said letter (copy with me) MC Chahal has very conveniently shifted this ambitious project of CM of having an hospital for Infectious diseases on to the State Government now. It means very clearly had I NOT WRITTEN/EXPOSED this, the BMC would have gone through with it right? So now that they are exposed, they thought just to save the embarrassment, instead of shelving, why not transfer the responsibility on to the state government & let them take a call. So will Mr. Chahal or even the Chief Secretary punish the entire panel for putting the image of BMC at stake just to please the coterie & fooling us? Were the Chief Minister & Sharad Pawar even aware of this ‘to be’ scam? Will the guilty be punished by the BMC? Just for record, The 9 member committee who had planned this “operation” are Director (Land Acquisition) Chief Engineer (DP), Deputy Commissioner (Public Health), Municipal Architect, Chief Accountant (Finance)Dean of Kasturba Hospital, Assistant Commissioner (Improvement) and a representative from Legal Department of the BMC.
The laughable part of the letter was the mention of non-availability of plots of BMC with the size requirement to build this hospital. If a BMC Commissioner does not know the various plots & reservations on them, who will? OK, just a peak outside cabin Mr. MC, and the peons of the BMC know which plot is available where and believe me I won’t be surprised if any of the peon told me, sir, “Use Section 50 of the MRTP act, under public emergency , any reservation can be changed as less than as 24 hours”. And they say, they don’t have plots. Laughable isn’t it? I have a list of such available plots, but the agenda of the BMC was never to acquire plots available with them free of cost, the plan was to help the likes of Bhosale’s & Shah’s, allegedly, by allowing acquisition & give them FSI. By the way, the said plot at Mulund has reservation that of PG & school, am told.
Just off the topic: Readers, very delighted to tell you all, again after my expose on shifting Metro Car Shed from Aarey to Pahadi Goregaon, MMRDA has scrapped that plan too….What I have heard in the meeting held with the CM, MMRDA boss R A Rajeev (and many senior bureaucrats present) has convinced CM to shift the metro car shed now to Kanjurmarg😆😆…Yes, the same salt pan land of Central Government wherein the Madan Committee and Manoj Saunik Committee had out rightly decided to reject this proposal 2 years ago as it is NOT FEASIBLE. God alone knows what is Mr. Rajeev up to? Why doesn’t he take anyone in confidence including the Advisor and then present his ideas to the CM? Watch this space for more..But one more ZHATKA to the coterie from moi….
Now Mr. Chahal, though you have been getting quite a number of accolades & awards for handling Covid, I hope your attention is not diverted from a serious scam about to happen right under your nose of the Sewage Treatment Plant
It would be justified if I pass on some hints. If you can act NOW, this scam can be averted saving almost more than 10,000 cr of money which otherwise would land in the pockets of undeserving contractors. Few Corporates who have been known for making towels and being Developers have suddenly decided to become Contractors and that too at the expense of the MCGM. Being good at weaving things, they have used their expertise to weave a cartel of again Contractors who have no prior experience of the project which they are going to bid. Of course they have the backing of an influential Pune Business man & his closest bureaucrat friend who had initiated the same project two years earlier. The criteria & specifications are tweaked to accommodate only certain companies whose tie up is mandatory. Among those one is a prominent name in the corporation known to have procured work in MCGM in the year 2012 and not having completed even 15% of the said work. Yes, corporation is busy trying to find out way to help him out of this sticky situation by trying to foreclose the contract or else he might get blacklisted. The other agency is a Chinese conglomerate showcasing itself as a Singaporean company. Will get muckier to protect this company when the truth will eventually come out about its Chinese veracity.
It seems this scam has got the knives out amongst the political partners (Cong-Shivsena & NCP) also and official letters from political leaders have been shot to your office highlighting the rather glaring points or might I call the restrictive clauses put to favor the few fortunate. The MCGM seems to have got all out of its way to make sure the “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” & the vocal for local request by the PM is thrown out of the window as what I heard is that specific clauses have been put just to make sure only international companies qualify.
I am just giving you a heads-up here!! I’m on to it…in my coming blogs I shall unearth each of the character mentioned above and how the exchequer of the MCGM will be looted if immediate action on the same is not taken at your end and your team.
Vikrant Hemant Joshi
