AFTER IT came to power, the AAP government had set up a five-member committee to probe the hiring of 385 GPS-enabled stainless steel tankers in 2012. The committee was formed in response to allegations of irregularities in the process of awarding tenders — a pre-election promise by AAP. Former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit was the DJB de facto chairperson when the tankers were procured. In its report submitted in 2016, the committee stated that the irregularities had resulted in a loss of nearly Rs 400 crore. The report was sent to then L-G Najeeb Jung, who forwarded it to the Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB). At the core of the scam are two questions — if the contract was awarded to a private company despite “exorbitantly higher rates” and if officials provided misleading information by portraying the GPS technology as “novel” and claiming that the hired company was a government body. As early as 2003, the Sheila Dikshit government acknowledged the DJB’s inability to provide water to the capital’s unauthorised colonies. In a planning document the same year, the government acknowledged their reliance on tankers and said “where piped water supply has not been provided. in JJ Cluster & Resettlement colonies. areas of short supply existing at the tail end of distribution system., the DJB is supplying water through tankers.” By 2011, sources said the Dikshit government realised that the present technology in their existing tankers led to massive leakages. As a solution, the government proposed the GPS-enabled water tankers. Eventually introduced in 2013 — as part of the new ‘Water Tanker Distribution Management System (WTDMS)’ — it is now at the centre of the scam. Questioning if the scheme was “novel” at all, the AAP government report claimed it was something that could easily be “designed, formulated and implemented by DJB engineers”. The project had been given to the National Institute of Smart Governance (NSIG), a private company. A DJB member had given “misleading information”, claiming it was a government agency, claimed the report. The NSIG website describes itself as a “not-for-profit company setup in a public-private-partnership (PPP) in 2002”. Before the project was given to NSIG, two earlier tenders for the same were rejected as only a single bidder participated. However, the rates of the lone bidder — SPML Infra Ltd — were “lower by about half the suggested cost”. Responding to the July 2010 invitation for tenders for DJB’s zones 1 and 2, SPML bid almost half the DJB’s price and was eventually awarded the contract for seven years at a total cost of Rs 50.98 crore. Although this was approved by the DJB, the report added that the work was cancelled within six weeks. On September 21, tenders were invited for three zones — V, VII and VIII — where SPML was once again the lowest bidder. The tender was again scrapped on March 29, 2011. While the AAP government had flagged this, a DJB official, working at the time, had said this was because “government bodies avoid contracts based on a single bid”. After the initial tenders, the government had allegedly changed the conditions of the tenders, which in turn led to heavy losses, said the report. Ignoring the lower rates had led to a loss of Rs 323.96 crore on the contract itself, and an additional expense of Rs 36.59 crore for hiring DIMS as consultants — a cumulative loss of Rs 360.55 crore. Despite repeated attempts, Dikshit could not be contacted for a comment. Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken told The Indian Express, “We have always maintained that there is no scam. Moreover, if there was, why hasn’t action been initiated by either the AAP government in Delhi or the Centre?”
