What is Delhi's Rs 2000-crore classroom scam in which ex-ministers Manish Sisodia, Satyendar Jain have been booked?

Anti-Corruption Branch, GNCTD has registered a case against Manish Sisodia and Satyendra Jain, the then Ministers of the erstwhile Delhi Govt. of Aam Aadmi Party, regarding allegations of a scam to the tune of Rs 2,000 crore in the construction of school classrooms/buildings in NCT of Delhi at exorbitant costs. The complaints from Harish Khurana, Spokesperson, BJP Delhi Pradesh, Kapil Mishra, MLA, and Neelkanth Bakshi, Media Relations Department, BJP, were received regarding corruption in the construction of approximately 12,748 school classrooms at an expenditure of Rs 2,892 crore. The lump sum cost for constructing one school room, as per the awarded tenders, is approximately Rs 24.86 lakh per room, whereas such rooms could ordinarily be constructed in Delhi for around Rs 5 lakh per room.

Further, it is alleged that the project was awarded to 34 contractors, the majority of whom are allegedly associated with Aam Aadmi Party.

According to Head of Anti-Corruption Bureau Madhur Verma, during verification, it was revealed that in the meetings of the Expenditure Finance Committee for the financial year 2015-16, it was decided that the project would be completed by June 2016 at the sanctioned cost, without any scope for future cost escalations.

However, despite these directions, not a single work was completed within the prescribed period, and significant deviations and cost escalations were observed.

During the enquiry, it was revealed that the examination report of the Chief Technical Examiner, Central Vigilance Commission, in the instant matter was issued on February 17, 2020, with the approval of the competent authority; however, the report was suppressed for about 3 yeaRs

The report of CTE/CVC raised serious violations of various clauses of the CPWD Works Manual 2014, GFR 2017, CVC guidelines, and other irregularities and also alleged that various decisions taken after the award of tenders were not in accordance with the laid guidelines of CVC and other manuals, which led to huge escalation of cost, resulting in financial loss.

The CVC report also observed that ultimately, the actual cost of the constructed SPS was more or less equal to the cost of permanent structures. The actual cost per sq. ft. of Priority-I, as worked out in the CVC report, is Rs 2292 per sq. ft. against the cost of pucca structure model schools @2044 - 2416 per sq. ft. Due to the adoption of richer specifications, the construction cost of SPS classrooms almost matched the cost of pucca classrooms and apparently no financial benefit of adoption of SPS construction was achieved.

During the enquiry, it was observed that the tenders were floated and contracts were awarded for Rs 860.63 crore. Subsequently, contract values escalated by 17% to 90% due to richer specifications. The escalation amounted to Rs 326.25 crore, of which Rs 205.45 crore was attributable to richer specifications, comprising 23.87% of the award value. No fresh tenders were invited to reflect these changes, contrary to CVC guidelines. In five schools, work worth Rs 42.5 crore was executed without proper tenders, using existing contracts.

Based on the aforementioned findings in the instant matter, a proposal to seek previous approval u/s 17-A POC Act was initiated against the former PWD and Education Ministers of the erstwhile Delhi Govt. The competent authority has accorded its approval to the proposal of ACB.

Accordingly, an FIR has been registered at the Anti-Corruption Branch and a comprehensive investigation has been launched to unearth the whole conspiracy and fix the role and culpability of the alleged Ministers, known/unknown Govt. officials/contractoRs 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DNA staff and is published from ANI)