New Delhi, Aug 5: In a development that could spell trouble for Delhi Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit, the CAG today blamed her “active involvement” for causing a loss of over Rs 30 crore in the Commonwealth Games-related projects.
Acknowledging the marked improvements in illumination levels on roads in the national capital, the report, however, said that “the decision to use imported luminaries on selected ‘A' category of roads was not based on technical parameters, but was taken with the active involvement of the Chief Minister; this resulted in avoidable expenditure of more than Rs 30 crore”.
In its report tabled in Parliament today, the country's official auditor CAG also said that the street-scaping and beautification project was “ill-conceived and ill-planned” without an overreaching vision, resulting in a wasteful expenditure of over Rs 100 crore.
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), which reviewed seven key road and flyover projects by the Delhi Government linked to the mega sporting event, found that higher rate of profit and overhead charges led to higher cost baselines for potential bidders.
“We also found irregularities in award of some projects, including consideration of separate letters quoting a lump-sum amount and use of correction fluid in tender documents,” it said.
CAG's report comes on top of the Prime Minister-appointed Shunglu Committee's findings which also found procedural violations by Delhi Lt Governor Tejinder Khanna and the Chief Minister for alleged inadequacies in executing CWG projects.
The CAG report blamed the Delhi government for the street -scaping and beautification projects which was “ill-conceived and ill-planned”, without a broad overreaching vision and perspective of how this would impact the urban design and development.
“The project was largely a consultant-driven project, with the selection of consultants being arbitrary and non-transparent, and without any common design guidelines and targeted budgetary estimates.
“This resulted in adoption of richer specifications in an arbitrary and inconsistent manner in different packages. We found the average awarded works for street-scaping and beautification works of Rs 4.8 crore/km to be exorbitant, with total estimated wasteful expenditure of more than Rs 100 crore,” the report said.
The report also found flaws in tendering process adopted by the Delhi Government's Public Works Department and other civic and construction agencies for faulty designs.
The report found that restrictive tendering conditions were imposed, ensuring sharing of signage works between the two major sheet manufacturers. “Subsequently, designs for the signages were also revised, with several extra and substituted items of dubious utility,” it stated.
“Also, we found restrictive tendering conditions imposed by PWD (GNCTD), as well as a deficient ‘design based' tendering approach followed by the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC),” the report said.
The CAG found that revamping of Connaught Place, Delhi's main shopping hub, was “plagued by unusual delay” and caused losses worth crores. PTI
