ED undertakes PMAY housing scam inquiry

Lokmat News Network

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar:

The ‘Samrath Construction Co.’ was awarded the contract of constructing thousands of residential blocks for the urban poor under Prime Minister Awas Yojana (PMAY). Meanwhile, the inquiry has been instigated to detect how the company grabbed the contract of valuing Rs 4,500 crore although it was not having a financial capacity.

Earlier, during the departmental inquiry, it was revealed that the company had submitted three different quotations from one IP address. Hence the CSMC registered the case against the contractor with the City Chowk police station. In the meantime, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) appeared on the scene.

A brief history of PMAY

The housing scheme for the urban poor under PMAY was inaugurated in 2016. The municipal corporation invited online applications from the beneficiaries. A total of 80,000 citizens submitted the applications. However, the civic administration failed to implement the scheme till 2022. As a result, MP Imtiaz Jaleel raised the issue in Parliament. The district collector then provided 128 hectares of land to CSMC in phases for PMAY. It was mandatory to fix the contractor for constructing the blocks before March 31, 2022.

Tender by the municipal corporation

The civic body in a hurry invited the tender to construct 1000 residential blocks. The contract was awarded to Samrath Construction Co. The contractor was given work as per the availability of the land to the municipal corporation. The contractor was not having the financial capacity to handle the project then also it was given a multi-crore contract. The irregularity surfaced during the investigation. The contractor to grab the project formed a ‘ring’ of the different agencies and submitted their three different quotations through one IP address. This was detected by civic authorities during the investigation.

Deposited Rs 88 lakh only

The contractor was supposed to construct 39,000 houses in the city. As per the quotation submitted by the contractor, the valuation of the project was Rs 4,500 crore. As per norms, it was expected for the contractor to deposit a one per cent bank guarantee (of Rs 46 crore) to the corporation, but it had deposited Rs 88 lakh only. Hence the civic body had not signed any agreement with Samrath Construction. Ironically, the contractor had also prepared the detailed project report (DPR) of the housing project.

Prior intimation to UDD

Earlier, the municipal corporation had informed the irregularity of the contractor to the state Urban Development Department (UDD). A high-level committee was formed to conduct inquiries at the state government level. The committee recommended cancelling the contract awarded to Samrath Construction.