The Surat CID (Crime) arrested 10 people in connection with the drinking water works scam for misappropriation of state funds in Navsari. The gang comprising government officials and private contractors is accused of siphoning off government money without executing the projects. Navsari is the Lok Sabha constituency of State BJP president C R Paatil.
Five government officials affiliated with the Gujarat Water Supply & Sewerage Board (GWSSB) and five contractors have defrauded the state to the tune of Rs.9 crores. They took away money and did not execute at least 90 projects which they were entrusted with for completion.
The 10 accused namely Dalpat Patel, Rakesh Patel, Jagdish Parmar, Narendra Shah, Tejal Shah, Jyoti Shah, Shilpi Raj, Karin Patel, and Mohammad Nalwala and Dharmesh Patel were presented granted a police remand of 9 days by the court.
Dalpat Patel, the executive engineer from Navsari district who had the power to approve bills is appearing as the main culprit. Putting his power to misuse, Patel passed the wrong bills, and falsely reported completion of work even when nothing was done on the ground in reality. Dalpat Patel retired last year.
The government officials in dereliction of their duty not only let the violation of the official tendering rules that caused the loss to the government treasury but also awarded tenders arbitrarily to their coterie.
The fraud took place in the implementation of the Gujarat government’s scheme for supplying water to the tribal areas in the Navsari district, Vansada, and Bilimora by building pipelines and borewells. Out of 94 such projects verified by the vigilance department, a whopping 90 have been found not executed. As many as 163 works have been awarded to the contractors close to the officials bypassing the prescribed procedure for tendering. The scammers created fake bills, measurement books and daily work musters.
Among those arrested along with the retired executive engineer are two women deputy executive engineers, an additional assistant engineer, a divisional accountant, and two senior clerks. The racket had been going on since April 2022.
The scammers felt so unafraid to commit the crime that in one case, they showed the same project under two different government schemes without executing it even once. A work order for a project at Amalsad in Navsari was issued under the 15th Finance Commission program year 202-22 and under the rejuvenation program in May 2023. No work is found to have been done in this project even when money has been paid. The brazenness of the accused can also be gauged by the fact that the five per cent tender security deposit mandated to be kept in the form of FDR as per the rules was also revealed to be fake.
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