Case against Chandigarh parking firm: Vigilance may investigate role of officials

The Chandigarh Police recently lodged an FIR against the parking company M/s Paschatya Entertainment Private Limited for submitting fake bank guarantees of Rs 1.67 crore to the municipal corporation during the allotment of 57 Zone-2 parking lots in 2020.

Gupta added, “A committee of four councillors will be constituted to co-ordinate with the police on this on a daily basis. If we have to go to the DGP, we will go.” The mayor immediately constituted a committee that comprised AAP’s Jasbir Singh Laddi, Congress leader Gurbax Rawat, BJP’s Mahesh Inder Sidhu, and the SAD’s Hardeep Singh and Umesh Ghai.

Leader of Opposition and AAP leader Damanpreet Singh said the vigilance inquiry was an eyewash and sought a CBI probe. “Wasn’t it an officer of the Chandigarh civic body who had to verify this matter? Isn’t any officer held responsible? All these faulty roles need to be investigated,” Singh said. Councillors of the AAP and Congress also raised slogans and protested on the issue.

The FIR was registered following a complaint by the civic body’s Superintendent (Parking) Sunil Dutt who alleged that Sanjay Sharma and others submitted forged bank sureties. The three-year contract given to Paschatya and another firm ended last month. Since then, the corporation has been managing all 89 parking lots by itself.

While working to recover licence fee dues of Rs 6.5 crore from the Zone-2 contractor, the corporation officials recently approached the bank concerned to recover the money through bank guarantees submitted by the contractor, but the bank informed that the guarantees for Rs 1.5 crore were fake.

The contractor will also have to pay over Rs 6 lakh as damages for not acting on multiple notices sent by the civic body on various issues.