A hundred 42-inch colour television sets that cost Rs 52,096 apiece were shown as bought at Rs 1.2 lakh each.
200 beds that have a market price of Rs 40,415 each were shown as purchased at Rs 2 lakh apiece.
15 diesel generators priced at Rs 65.74 lakh per set were shown as procured at Rs 89.39 lakh each.
15 units of indoor-outdoor light fixtures with a market price of Rs 18.4 crore were shown as bought at Rs 38.30 crore.
The alleged anomalies in the purchase of items for the fledgling Super Speciality Cancer Institute and Hospital in Lucknow had been pointed out by the Uttar Pradesh principal accountant-general in a report to the government on February 17 this year.
Within two days, the probe into the alleged irregularities was handed over to the same public works department whose agency has been accused of making the purchases at bloated rates.
The hospital spread over 77 acres was conceived in 2014 when the Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav was chief minister and inaugurated on October 20, 2020, by chief minister Yogi Adityanath and defence minister and Lucknow MP Rajnath Singh. The questionable purchases totalling Rs 56.9 crore were made between 2016 and 2020.
The Uttar Pradesh Rajkiya Nirman Nigam Limited (UPRNNL), a wing of the PWD that had been assigned to build and set up the hospital, had made the purchases and is to buy 600 more TV sets and more beds.
However, after principal accountant-general Jayant Sinha submitted the report to the government on February 17, the investigation was handed over to the PWD, against whose agency the allegation of irregularities has been made.
While notifying the inquiry on February 19, Chandra Bhushan, special secretary of the state PWD, set up a probe committee with three officials — the chief engineer (development, UPRNNL), chief architect (PWD) and the finance controller (PWD). “The committee is directed to make available the inquiry report to the government within 15 days,” the notification said.
Sources in the PWD said the report was yet to be filed. The Telegraph could not contact Sinha, the principal accountant-general. An email sent to Uttar Pradesh chief secretary Rajendra Kumar Tiwari by this newspaper on Friday for his comment on the alleged scam did not elicit an answer.
