Have followed due process while procuring lights, says ADC
By: Sameer Lone
Pulwama: A major streetlight scam has surfaced in South Kashmir’s Pulwama district as the officials in Rural Development Department (RDD) have purchased streetlights allegedly at exorbitant rates to benefit a blue-eyed contractor, official sources told Precious Kashmir.
“The RDD officials have purchased the streetlights at nearly 100% increase in price without following proper procedure for tendering. The highest price of a street light installed by the RDD cost Rs 14000, while the officials in Pulwama bought them at more than Rs 24000,” sources added.
The residents of Pulwama have appealed to the Office of the Lieutenant Governor to intervene in the matter and task the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) to investigate the scam.
It was further learnt that the streetlights are yet to be installed and administration has released an advance payment only to favour a few blue-eyed contractors thus incurring losses to Panchayat Raj Institution funds.
The Rural Development Department with consent and approval of the District Development Council members and PRIs installs street lights in Panchayat halqas out of the PRI funds in Jammu and Kashmir.
The tenders are floated by the Rural Development Department with the approval of the Assistant Commissioner Development (ACD) through the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) portal.
The DDC members in Pulwama district have also approved the plan to install solar street lights in their constituencies and it was vetted by the ACD.
According to the sources, the ACD office opened the link for e-tenders on GeM portal for a particular period of time so that his blue-eyed contractors get the tenders.
They said that only a few companies filed the tenders while others could not as the link was not put up for public.
“The link for the e-tender was put on the GeM portal during a prescribed time so that only the above favourite companies can apply. We didn’t see the link,” several companies and the contractors said.
As per the DDC members, they had approved the plan of nearly Rs one crore for installation of the lights and were expecting that the villages falling in their halqas will get adequate street lights.
But they were shocked to see that each light has been purchased between Rs 23,000 to Rs 24000 when the similar lights cost Rs 12000 to Rs 13000 in the market.
Reportedly, the same lights were installed by JAKEDA in Jammu and Kashmir for Rs 12000 each.
Sources further said the Assistant Commissioner Development (ACD) office has released half of the payment to the contractors before the execution of the work.
The companies have shown exorbitant cost for the lights and officials in ACD are in league with them, they added.
Following stiff resistance by the DDC members who rejected installing the lights in their constituency and Halqas, the district administration Pulwama had put on hold the process of installation of the lights.
When contacted for their comments, the majority of DDC members in the district said they have rejected the proposal because of the higher rates and loss to the PRI funds. “We didn’t agree to install the lights as they have been purchased at very exorbitant rates simply to embezzle funds meant for development,” the DDC members said.
ACD Pulwama Hilal Ahmed Mir told Precious Kashmir that they have cleared the matter following the due process.
Asked if he could elaborate what does ‘cleared’ mean, the ACD said there are different specifications of street lights. “We have followed the due process while procuring the lights,” he said.
The members demand that the only option to save the public money and PRI funds is to float reverse tenders or cancel the previous tenders so that public funds are saved.
