On counting day, what’s 1 dead man?

Shankar said that the problems and lapses pointed out by Dubey were ‘‘exactly the same problems’’ that the Vigilance Commission had found during their technical audits of Golden Quadrilateral projects.

‘‘We discussed the tragic incident in the commission today,’’ Shankar told The Indian Express, ‘‘and when our technical audit teams prepare for their next round of spot inspections, we will be tempted to go and see the stretches Dubey has complained about. We would like to go and see things for ourselves.’’

Shankar said that given the grand scale of the project, the CVC had prepared several ‘‘Quality Performance Reports (QPRs)’’ pointing to the nature of defects in the finalisation of contracts and ‘‘execution of works.’’

‘‘We found some glaring and serious omissions and many are in the nature of what Dubey has talked about in his letter. The CVC’s reports are not for public consumption but the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has taken several corrective measures based on our spot reports and audits,’’ he said.Shankar said while he did not recall any letter Dubey wrote directly to them, a copy of the correspondence he had with other agencies may have been marked to the CVC. ‘‘In such cases, we wait and expect the other departments to take action. And when someone says he is under threat no one believes that he will actually be killed. No one takes these things so seriously,’’ he admitted.

According to Shankar, the most significant failing in the Golden Quadrilateral project was that there was no internal system of audit or supervision and there was an over-dependence on consultants. ‘‘The foreign contractors and borrowers may have their own checks and balances but according to me, that is not enough when thousands of crores are involved. People think we are trying to impose the PWD on the GQ but this is not correct. What we want is an assurance that some checks and balances of the Government are in place.’’

Shankar said some of their technical teams had returned with examples of stretches of projects where hardly any work had been done or where the prevailing law and order situation was holding things up.

Several meetings had taken place between the CVC and the NHAI where all these points were discussed. As he put it, ‘‘Now that we have this shocking incident before us, we will again look at some specific points and stretches on the highway.’’