MC yet to recover Rs 22 lakh from Cong leaders who cancelled day market

Although it has been a year since the audit report came out, there has been no further development. Sources said that the Audit Department sent several reminders to the officers for identification of the councillors who had voted in favour of cancellation, but is still awaiting a reply.

The latest reminder was sent around a month ago. Sources said that the letter was forwarded to various branches for providing the necessary information.

“The recovery of wasted money should have been made till now. The construction of the project was started and the Public Health Department incurred a heavy loss. Three or four reminders have been sent to the officials but nothing has been done so far. When the project was cancelled, the nominated councillors were kept in the dark by the Congress councillors at the behest of the big bosses in the party. My suggestion is that the market should be revived for the benefit of the vendors,” said BJP councillor Arun Sood.

The proposal for construction of the day market in Charan Singh Colony, Mauli Jagran, was approved in 2011. However, the next year, the Congress proposed that the project be scrapped as the number of people demanding sites was much more than the sites that were being constructed. This was approved amidst ruckus in a house meeting and the Rs 86 lakh project was scrapped.

Congress councillors now say that they are not liable to pay any money to the corporation. “We have not been served any such notice so far, but if it is done, we’ll strongly oppose it. It was within our purview to scrap the project. There are numerous projects which were initiated and then cancelled by the corporation. For many of these, the consultancy and other charges are wasted once they are cancelled. But in no case has any councillor or official been asked to pay any money. We wonder why this particular project is any different,” said Congress councillor Pardeep Chhabra.