MMRC, MMRDA pass the buck on data

The Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation (MMRC) and Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) seem to be playing a blame game over the data of public money spent between 2008-2014 on study tours to foreign countries by MMRC officials that has gone missing.

The trips were made to gain knowledge about the construction of 33-km-long Colaba-Bandra-Seepz Metro-3 underground corridor.

The MMRC claims its accounts were handled by the MMRDA till 2014, after which MMRC has been handling its accounts independently. The MMRDA, however, claims that it has given all the data to MMRC.

The Asian Age on June 24, 2016 that MMRC, the implementing agency for the Colaba-Bandra-Seepz Metro-3 underground corridor, has maintained no records on the number of foreign visits made by MMRC officials and the expenses incurred on study tours to foreign countries since the corporation’s inception in 2008 up to 2014, revealed data accessed by this newspaper via a Right To Information (RTI) application.

P.D. Yerkuntwar, public information officer (PIO), MMRC, had directed that data prior to January 2015 should be obtained from the accounts section of the MMRDA as both were functioning in the same office till 2014.

However, when this correspondent sought to obtain the information from the public information officer (PIO) of MMRDA’s accounts section, he said it was not available with MMRDA, and it had provided MMRC with all the information when the latter shifted into the new office.

On contacting Sanjay Andani, deputy chief financial officer, MMRC, he said, “I have requested MMRDA to provide information regarding the data on foreign tours to MMRC, and I expect the finance department of MMRDA to provide with the same.”

But the finance department of MMRDA has maintained its stand that it has no information pertaining to that of MMRC after the corporation got separated from it in 2015.

Meanwhile, activists have slammed the authorities for failing to maintain data where expenses were made at the cost of public money.

Former chief information commissioner (CIC) Shailesh Gandhi said, “It was wrong on the part of MMRC to direct the RTI applicant to the MMRDA and it should have simply transferred the RTI.”