A littered neighbourhood in Golmuri on Friday. (Bhola Prasad)

The state urban development department on Friday handpicked SPML Infra Limited to implement its solid waste management project under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, but is awaiting a clean chit from the district administration.

Gurgaon-based SPML Infra (formerly Subhash Projects and Marketing Limited), selected after a lengthy tender process that wound up last month, has more than three decades of experience in water, power, environment and infrastructure management.

But state urban development secretary Nitin Madan Kulkarni, who told The Telegraph that Jamshedpur Urban Agglomeration (JUA) had recommended the Gurgaon firm, added that his department would sit on the name for some more time as they had received a “telephonic allegation” about the company.

“We had received a complaint from someone over the telephone. The crux of the allegation was that SPML Infra Limited had been blacklisted in Delhi and Madurai after it executed some projects. I asked the deputy commissioner of East Singhbhum to crosscheck the credentials of the firm and submit a report to the department. We are waiting a nod from the East Singhbhum administration before handing out the work order to the agency,” Kulkarni, in the city on Friday to attend a function, said.

The JUA nodal officer R.N. Dwivedi, however, told The Telegraph on Friday that they had done a check on the allegations and were satisfied with the reports that they had received from Madurai (Tamil Nadu) and Delhi.

He also added that, contrary to the allegation, the company had not been blacklisted

“We found the complaint to be completely fake and will be submitting a report in this regard to the state urban development department on Saturday,” Dwivedi said.

The ambitious multi-crore waste management project is slated to kick-start in Jugsalai Municipality and three notified area committees of Jamshedpur, Adityapur and Mango.

The project will also cover the eight village panchayats of Parsudih, Ghorabandha, Chhota Govindpur, Gadra, Haludbani, Sarjamda, Kitadih and Bagbera.

The East Singhbhum district administration has already earmarked a sprawling 60 acres at Khairbani near Govindpur to set up the big-ticket solid waste management processing plant.

Manpower crunch, a common woe, will also be taken care of. Sources said that the civic body authorities had plans to press into service 1,000 cleaning staff in Mango, Adityapur and Jugsalai for door-to-door collection of waste from over 400,000 households.

Urban development secretary Kulkarni also added that his department had plans to start the Mango drinking water supply project as early as in August 2012, to render relief to the residents of the parched Mango area.