A day after two Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials’ names cropped up in a road works scam running into crores, police sources reveal that more officials from the civic body might be ar
A day after two Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials’ names cropped up in a road works scam running into crores, police sources reveal that more officials from the civic body might be arrested.
On Thursday, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) arrested the chief engineer of the roads and traffic department Ashok Padamsingh Pawar (57) and chief engineer of the vigilance department Uday Namdeo Murudkar (54) for being involved in a Rs 352-crore road works scam. Till date, 24 people including auditors and employees of the contracting firms have been arrested. The SIT team started investigating the case after an internal inquiry committee of the BMC found major irregularities in over 200 roads across the city.
The civic body then registered an FIR with the Azad Maidan police against six contractors who had been given the project.
A senior officer, who is part of the SIT team, said that it had asked the BMC to send the list of civic engineers who were part of the reconstruction and repair works of the inspected roads.
“We have asked them to send the list of all the engineers of the BMC who were part of the work on 34 roads, which were initially inspected. They are still inspecting many other roads and we will gradually ask them for the list of the other engineers,” the officer said.
The BMC set up an internal committee last year following a letter from mayor Snehal Ambekar to municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta drawing his attention to a major graft in the pre-monsoon roadwork. The committee then began inspection work of all the streets and early this year finished inspecting 34 roads in the first phase. In the second phase, the committee has begun to check nearly 217 roads in the city and the suburbs.
“We are looking into the role of the civic body since it was the final authority in the matter. Once we get the list of the engineers for the said roads, we will investigate whether they had any role to play in the scam,” said the officer.
