NGO alleges fake bills for PWD work

NEW DELHI: Claiming to be a group of RTI activists, Road Anti-Corruption Organisation (RACO) alleged corruption in PWD on Tuesday. It accused a man, who it claims is a "relative" of chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, of having cheated PWD of a few crores of rupees by submitting fake bills for material purchased for construction of a drain.

A Delhi government spokesperson denied knowledge of any relationship between this person and Kejriwal, dismissing the allegations as "rubbish" and "not worth responding to".

TOI is withholding the name of the contractor and his company as it was unable to independently verify any of the accusations. Attempts to reach him failed while his son's phone was switched off. His son works with him.

Rahul Sharma, chairman of RACO, said they had identified projects worth Rs 300 crore in PWD that showed discrepancies and had filed a complaint with the Anti-Corruption Branch (ABC) against four companies, including the company owned by this man.

"We identified problematic projects by assessing the bid amount against the government estimate. In 2014-15 and 2015-16, all tendered projects were an average of 60% lower than the estimated cost. In the case of construction of an RCC drain and improvement of side berms from Shani Mandir to Bakoli village up to drain 6 along the service road of NH 44, the work was sanctioned for Rs 4.90 crore," said Sharma.

"The contractor submitted fake bills to PWD, as verified by Haryana's sales tax department, for almost Rs 2 crore. He claims to have purchased material from a company that is not in PWD's list of approved vendors, and the company from which he has supposedly purchased material has not made any sales in the past two years. When the material has not been bought, how could the drain be built? We wanted to inspect the drain but PWD stonewalled us," said Sharma.