Maharashtra’s Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar found himself in the dock yet again over his alleged involvement in the multi-thousand crore irrigation scam, as the latest CAG report pegged the cost overruns of irrigation at a staggering around Rs27,000 crore and activist Medha Patkar released new documents linking NCP leaders to the scam.
The CAG report for the year ending in March 2012, tabled in the State Assembly on the last Budget Session on Thursday brought to light the cost overruns of up to Rs27,000 crore in irrigation projects in 242 out of the total 426 irrigation projects incomplete projects.
In another damning piece of information, the CAG stated that Rs43,270.01 crore were totally spent on 426 incomplete projects in Maharashtra.
In its stinging criticism of the DF Government in which the ruling Congress has held the crucial irrigation portfolio for nearly 14 years since October 1999, the CAG stated that in 242 projects, the collective cost had escalated by Rs26,617.26 crore from Rs7,215.03 crore to Rs33,832.29 crore. The report also mentioned that at least nine projects had cost overruns of above Rs800 crore.
The CAG strictures vis-a-vis the cost overruns in irrigation projects will make matters difficult for Ajit in the coming days. For, it was he who had held the crucial State irrigation portfolio from 1999 to 2010, before he was elevated as the deputy chief minister and handed the portfolios of Finance and Energy.
Ajitdada, it may be recalled, had resigned as the deputy chief minister on September 25 last year in the wake of media reports that revealed that the State irrigation department, then headed by Ajitdada, had awarded as many as 38 contracts worth Rs 20,000 crore in Vidarbha region during 2009, without seeking the mandatory clearance from the governing council of the Vidarbha Irrigation Development Corporation (VIDC) and following proper rules and procedures.
Notwithstanding his claim that he would not return to the State Cabinet unless he was cleared of the allegations of corruption by an independent inquiry, Ajitdada returned as the deputy CM, ahead of the winter session of the State legislature in December last year – a development that came on the heels of the presentation of a white paper which did not go into the scam nor did it deal with his alleged role.
On a day when the CAG report that damned the DF government on the cost overruns in irrigation projects, Medha Patkar of the National Alliance of People’s Movement (NAPM) claimed to have unearthed new documents that purportedly showed that politicians from the NCP as well as the BJP had received bribes from an infrastructure company involved in the construction of Gosikhurd irrigation project.
Producing a 56-page document at a news conference here, Patkar demanded that the government appoint a judicial commission under the Commission of Inquiry Act, 1952 to probe the irregularities in irrigation projects.
She said that all small, medium and large irrigation projects be brought under the purview of the inquiry commission.
Patkar alleged that documents of a 2011 Income Tax assessment of Dhriendra Bhat, a director of Mahalakshmi Infra Projects ltd (MIl) showed that nearly Rs 43 crore were distributed as bribes to powerful politicians, and officials in the irrigation corporations.
“The assessment report based on documents, diary, papers seized from the residences of its director, Dhirendra Anant Bhat show fine details of money paid during the pre-tendering process for garnering the contracts. Some of the beneficiaries are Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, former BJP president Nitin Gadkari, Gopinath Munde, Sunil Deshmukh MlA, Vijay Wadettiwar and their associates,” Patkar alleged.
Meanwhile, contesting Patkar’s allegations against Gadkari and Munde, the Maharashtra BJP spokesperson Madhav Bhandari said in a statement issued here in the night: “The allegations leveled by NAPM leader Medha Patkar against BJP leaders Nitin Gadkari and Gopinath Munde about their involvement in the irrigation scam are absolutely baseless. There is not even an iota of truth in her allegations. We refute her allegations”.