Parking firm director arrested, civic officials who cleared file given 15 days’ time to explain

SP Bansal said, “An FIR was lodged on the issue on February 18 last month under section 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code. Then the issue was handed over to EOW wing on March 6, following which we added Section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code. During the raids, we arrested the director of the firm, Sanjay Sharma of Delhi. Sharma was produced before court and taken on police remand for four days and then for an additional two days. His remand will be ending on Monday.”

The SP said that it was only on the statement of Sharma that the main accused, contractor Anil Kumar Sharma who is also Delhi-based, is being looked for. He is absconding, according to the police.

The FIR was registered following a complaint by the civic body’s superintendent (parking) Sunil Dutt who alleged that 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.

When asked about the role of civic body officials and bank officials, the SP said that they “are investigating the role of MC and bank officials” and the investigations cannot be revealed much.

The officials said that the same firm had also filled in tenders in Delhi. However, whether they have adopted the same modus operandi there as well by giving fake bank guarantees is not yet known.

Adding to SP’s version, Municipal Commissioner Mitra said, “In fact, the parking contractor was not making regular payments, following which we had served many termination notices as well. In one of the house meetings, when it was resolved by the General House that the contract will not be extended to this firm, we contacted the bank in Delhi to recover the Rs 1.5 crore amount and that is when we got to know that the bank guarantee given in the case was fake and forged.”

Civic body running parallel investigation

Municipal Commissioner Mitra specified that the civic body is running a parallel investigation to probe the role of civic officials in the case. Also, she said that the firm has been served a blacklisting notice and has been given 10 days to make an appearance before the MC.

“To investigate the role of officials who had cleared their files, a time of 15 days has been given where they have been asked to explain as to why action may not be taken against them,” she said.

“We have served a blacklisting notice to the firm already. If they don’t make any appearance before us, public notices will be issued against them in various media like newspapers. Only after that, MC would be taking further action,” she said, adding that “the agreement was signed only after the bank guarantee was received so it’s likely that this was done at the start of the contract”.
What happened in General House on March 6

After the parking scam rocked the General House meeting in the zero hour itself, Mayor Gupta had said the chief vigilance officer of the Union Territory has been asked to investigate the role of officials of the civic body and the bank in the matter against the city’s parking contractor who fled after submitting fake bank guarantees.

All the councillors from BJP, Congress and AAP had united seeking a report on officials involved and had even demanded to see month-wise dues. As the same could not be provided immediately, the issue led to a verbal tiff between BJP councillor Kanwarjeet Rana and the mayor, following which the House was adjourned.

As the General House meeting began, all the councillors, irrespective of the party lines, were agitated over the parking issue as to how firms are befooling the civic body.

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.

After a ruckus, even a committee of five councillors was constituted by Mayor Gupta to co-ordinate with the police on this on a daily basis. The committee comprised AAP’s Jasbir Singh Laddi, Congress leader Gurbax Rawat, BJP’s Mahesh Inder Sidhu, SAD’s Hardeep Singh and nominated councillor Umesh Ghai.