Garbage contracts awarded to one extended family

Garbage contracts awarded to one extended family
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: The Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) seems to have given most of the packages of new garbage contracts to one extended family. BMP officials maintain that there was no bar on family members bidding for the three- year contracts worth Rs 250 crore. And this is a huge loophole for one Gopinath Reddy to thwart the spirit of transparency by ‘engineering’ bids from his wife, brothers and in-laws, say BMP sources.

Gopinath himself had submitted bids for seven day packages, eight compactor packages and one bid for mechanical sweeping. His wife Kavitha had submitted bids for three packages of mechanical sweeping, three night packages and one day package while his brother P Purandara Reddy bid for eight day packages.

P Anandavardhana Reddy, who is said to be Gopinath’s brother, bid for five-day packages, eight compactor and one mechanical sweeping packages and his sister’s son E R Santosh made one bid. His brother’s sons P Vidyanath Reddy and P Vishnuvardhana Reddy have made one and six bids respectively.

Gopinath’s son-in-law E Ramana Reddy bid for two compactor packages and six-day packages while another relative C Munireddy bid for four packages.

A brother in law of Gopinath, C V Bhanumurthy Reddy competed for one day, two compactor and two mechanical packages while a nephew P Vijaydeva Reddy bid for four-day packages.

All the bids were made on individual basis and there were no firms. BMP sources said that another contractor S N Balasubramany managed to network rest of the bidders so that they could lobby ‘effectively’ to rig the contract amount to more than double the present cost.

Apparently, Commissioner K Jairaj was unaware of what was going on in these works handled by special commissioner’s office. The bids were evaluated on May 5 at a time when Jairaj was taking charge from his predecessor K Jothiramalingam. All the contracts were finalised and brought before the first council meeting in which Jairaj participated.

Amidst allegations of bribery, the Council approved the 30 garbage contracts with 12 of them going to Reddy ‘clan’ apart from four compactor packages and two mechanical packages.