A big scam has been exposed in Madhya Pradesh. The Congress government of the state made an advance payment of Rs 243.95 crore to the companies for building a water distribution channel from a dam. The surprising thing is that this channel has not been constructed till date. BJP’s Shivraj Singh government, which came to the state after Congress’s Kamal Nath, also ignored the advance amount.
This is the case of Singrauli district of Madhya Pradesh. According to the internal documents of the Water Resources Department obtained by Aajtak, the contract was given to a joint venture of a Hyderabad company and M/s Patel Engineering by the then Kamal Nath government in the year 2019. In the same year, an advance amount of Rs 243.95 crore was released for the construction of water distribution channel. This project is called Gond Major Irrigation Project and it was to be completed by 28 March 2024. But from 2019 till today, not a single pipe has been laid on the ground and the construction of the dam has not started yet.
Rajendra Meshram, the sitting BJP MLA from Devsar in Singrauli district, asked a written question in the Assembly regarding the progress of the project, but he too was not given any answer. MLA Meshram asked the Water Resources Minister in the Assembly:-
- Has the tender process for Gond Major Irrigation Project started?
- Is it true that despite getting approval in 2019, nothing happened on the ground?
- Is it right that nothing has happened even after five years of approval?
- Will the guilty officials be punished and will any deadline be fixed to complete the project?
Meshram’s questions did not get answered in the Assembly, but now he claims that the new government has given the necessary approval and NOC is being sought from the Union Environment Ministry.
New government approved: BJP MLA
Speaking to aajtak, MLA Meshram said, this was my dream project and in 2019, the then Kamal Nath government gave advances of more than Rs 200 crore to a joint venture company. The company did nothing and the work could not start after the fall of the government. Now the new government has approved and NOC is being taken.
their say
Commenting on this project, senior Madhya Pradesh journalist Arun Dixit said, this is a broad daylight robbery of the state’s resources, in which both Congress and BJP are involved. Congress released the advance amount in violation of all the conditions of the tender, in which it was mentioned that the pipeline could be laid only after the dam construction reaches a certain level. The construction work of the dam here never started and about Rs 244 crore was also released. On the other hand, the Shivraj Singh government that came to the state after Congress’s Kamal Nath also ignored the advance amount.