Cuttack: Vigilance has found large-scale bungling, irregularities and misappropriation of road construction funds in the village road project in Sundargarh district by three officers.

Sources said that around Rs 42.32 lakh was misappropriated by splitting a single road work of 1.5km into 22 reaches at the cost of Rs 6 lakh per reach in order to avoid putting the work to tender and take up the road execution work departmentally.

The vigilance cell division (Cuttack) started the inquiry on January 19 after receiving complaints of misappropriation of public funds in execution of cement concrete road from Mashak Yuvak Sangh House to Singh Crusher of Garjan in Lathikata block.

There were allegations about gross substandard work in execution of the project.

The vigilance sleuths found prima facie evidence regarding involvement of block development officer Purna Chandra Bhoi, assistant executive engineer Raj Kishore Sahoo and former assistant engineer of Lathikata block office (now assistant engineer, Rourkela Municipal Corporation) Budheswar Sahu in the case.

"All three were arrested and produced in the court of special judge, vigilance (Sundargarh)," a senior vigilance officer said.

It was found that Bhoi, Sahu and Sahoo entered into a criminal conspiracy with each other and grossly abusing their official positions, split up the road work valued at Rs 1,32,00,000 into 22 reaches, did not put the work to tender with dishonest intentions and executed the road departmentally, said the report.

"The work was executed in a substandard manner utilising less quantity of cement, MS rod, chips, metal and excess sand by preparing false bills and vouchers, which was corroborated through the report of core cutting quality control test conducted by research officer, R&B, Central Laboratory, Cuttack. The above officers thereby caused loss/misappropriation of public money to the tune of Rs 42,32,409.00," the report said.

The execution and the quality of work were technically inspected by the vigilance technical wing and the officials of quality control, roads and buildings division, Cuttack. During the technical inspection, core cutting samples of the concrete cement road was taken and examined and the strength of concrete grade was found to be much lower than the prescribed strength.

This huge difference clearly proved sub-standard execution of work as well as less use of materials and excess use of sand in order to achieve the desired thickness of the road, the inquiry revealed.

Due to the movement of heavy vehicles carrying fly ash products to fill up abandoned stone quarries at Garjan village, damage was caused to the road. Consequently, a concrete road is being built at the village.