An aerial view of Bhubaneswar city (file picture)

Bhubaneswar, Sept. 25: The arrest of an executive engineer by vigilance sleuths has opened a Pandora’s box in the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC).

A host of allegations of graft charges have cropped up in issuance of no-objection certificates (NOCs), solid waste transportation, holding tax collection, trade license issuance and construction and maintenance of civil work.

NOC violation

The civic authorities have received “specific” complaints from many ward councillors regarding loss of crores of rupees to the municipal corporation by some of its own officials. The officials had allegedly allowed many builders to get NOCs without paying BMC the mandatory 2 per cent of the entire project cost towards peripheral development of the locality.

But, as per the rules, the NOC has to be provided to a builder within one month of application. If the BMC takes more than one month’s time in providing the NOC, then the applicant may take it for granted that the NOC has been granted to him by default.

However, the authorities involved in providing NOCs knowingly take more than one month’s time so that the builders could get waivers of the peripheral development fees.

In many cases, some specific builders have cited examples of developing peripheral development infrastructure in localities outside their ward areas, and the BMC officials have allegedly accepted those proposals.

While a big project in ward No. 1 has to pay Rs 75 lakh as its peripheral development charges, the developer had shown welfare work in another locality near Jayadev Vihar as peripheral development.

“At Patia alone, there may be more than 40 cases where the NOC was delayed for the benefit of builders,’’ said Manoranjan Behera, councillor of ward No. 1.

Hinting that preliminary report of more than 50 such NOC violations were now available with the BMC authorities from its two engineering divisions, a BMC official also said that in wards 2 and 49 there could be around 10 more such major violations.

Waste transport

The efficacy of the solid waste transport mechanism has been in question in the city with dumped garbage lying unattended in many of its parts, especially at the entry point to Old Town near Gangua bridge. However, with the privatisation of such work in 40 out of the 60 wards, the result has not been satisfactory. While councillors alleged that transportation of the solid waste through contractors from 1,300 temporary transit points to the six interim transit stations was calculated on trip basis, there was a near absence of mechanism to ascertain how many trips of garbage lifting were done.

Pratap Kumar Jena, councillor of ward No. 41, said: “Both cleaning of wards and lifting of garbage by outsourced agencies has become a method to loot the civic body. By privatisation, the BMC is spending more than four to five times for the same work done by its own employees.’’

“The corporation is investing more than Rs 1.2 crore a month to lift solid waste dumped in the city, but there is no mechanism to find how many trips are actually heading towards the dumping site at Bhuasuni. While tractors are deployed to take garbage from temporary transit points to the interim station, big trucks transfers them to the final dumping ground,’’ said a BMC official.

Tax, trade licence

Reports prepared by the state vigilance in October last year found fabrication and manipulation of facts and figures and undue favour to private business houses by the BMC officials causing huge loss to the state exchequer. The vigilance had also filed cases of criminal offence against four BMC officials and two owners of prominent private properties at the heart of the city.

Four BMC officials, who had received the declaration furnished by the land users years ago, never informed the municipal engineers to reassess the structures. The two properties were at Jayadev Vihar and the BMC had lost around Rs 47 lakh holding tax from the two prominent hotel owners.

Similarly, trade license collection was not satisfactory with untrained and non-professional staff deployed with very low-salary structure, said an official.

The nexus

Vigilance sleuths exposed the alleged nexus between the contractors and the engineers on Friday while an executive engineer was arrested taking bribe from a contractor for clearing a file. Superintendent of police, vigilance, Jagannath Naik said in his complaint the contractor had informed that he had got contract for three roads in the city through e-tender, but was not able to get the work order.