Shahid Sayyed

The Bombay high court on Tuesday asked the state government and BMC to file a reply within two weeks on public interest litigation seeking transfer of investigation from city police to Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in the alleged road contract and ‘de-silting’ or ‘nalla safai scam’.

The BMC told the court that there is no need to transfer the probe to ACB at this stage because police investigation is underway and the civic body is also conducting an inquiry into it.

Vivekanand Gupta had filed this petition claiming that there is a nexus between contractors and civic officials. The PIL came up for hearing before the division bench of Justice V.M. Kanade and Justice M.S. Sonak on Tuesday. And the court has asked the civic body and the Maharashtra government to file affidavit in reply to the petition that claimed transferring the probe to ACB would expose the “unholy nexus” between contractors and BMC staff.

According to petitioner, there was water logging in the city on July 19 and 20 in 2015 due to heavy rains following which the municipal commissioner had ordered an inquiry into the de-silting contract work. The probe pertained to the construction of roads during 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16.

It is alleged in the petition that the probe revealed nexus between contractors and civic body officials. Following which the commissioner ordered filing of FIR against contractors involved in the de-silting scam.