Mumbai: While the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has started implementing its controversial pay and park policy with steep hike in parking rates, it has still not been able to retrieve over Rs 5 crore pending with contractors. Despite having blacklisted the contractors and filing a police complaint against them, the civic body has failed to collect the money so far.
According to civic officials, the BMC was duped of Rs 5 crore by two pay-and-park contractors — M/s Global Power System and M/s Raj Enterprises — appointed to manage parking lots in the A ward (Colaba). The vigilance department had exposed the scam last year.
The contractors had paid license fees for running the parking lots — allotted through an auction, by cheque for over a year. But all cheques were bounced, causing a revenue loss to the BMC. Following this, the BMC blacklisted the contractors from bidding for any more parking contracts and filed an FIR against them at MRA Marg police station for cheating, forgery and overcharging citizens.
“We have blacklisted the contractors and filed a complaint against them. The investigation is on in this case,” said A ward assistant commissioner Kiran Dighavkar.
While notices were issued to the two contractors, they were also called for a hearing as a part of the blacklisting process. But they did not attend the hearing, said civic officials. As per the civic data, the amount pending with M/s Global Power System is Rs 2.94 crore, and with M/s Raj Enterprises is Rs 2.06 crore.
“The BMC has suffered a revenue loss of Rs 5 crore, which is public money. This has happened due to the nexus between the contractors and civic officials, who were in charge that time. The BMC should have moved to court against the tainted contractors for cheating it,” he said.
