The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has been pulled up in the latest report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) for the various discrepancies in cost variations in road contracts allocated by it.
The report states that though the permissible cost variation is only 15 per cent, the norms were violated in 59 of
the total 88 road contracts leading to the costs going up by nearly `702 crore.
The report further gives a break up of the variations in the cost of cement concrete roads stating that it has gone up by 62 per cent, while asphalt roads have seen an increase of 57 per cent. The increase in the project cost due to the variation has resulted in the civic body spending `469.09 crore for cement concrete and `233.22 crore for asphalt roads.
The variation was found during the audit scrutiny for the period of December 2009 to October 2011 The report also pointed to the fact that fresh road work on various roads in the city were taken up without inviting tenders, which is one of the reason for the variations.
This not only led to violation of the existing Act and directives of the civic body, but also deprived the BMC of the benefits of the competitive rates.
Incidentally, the report points that a pothole-filing machine bought at `2.34 crore was kept lying idle. The report has also pulled up the BMC for the irregularities in capital value that led to a loss of `45 crore. It has stated that the favours given to Vaishnavi Builders and Developers were uncalled for.