Former PWD official gets temporary relief from High Court

In a temporary relief to a retired PWD executive engineer accused of spending Rs 113 crore more than the sanctioned budget, the Bombay High Court has directed the police not to file a charge sheet in the case till June 20, when it would hear his petition.
A division bench of Justices P V Hardas and Mridula Bhatkar was hearing a petition filed by Swamidas Chobe, who served in Maharashtra PWD as executive engineer from 2010 to January 2012, seeking to quash the case lodged against him.
In October 2012, an FIR was lodged against him by Azad Maidan police for alleged criminal breach of trust and issuing cheques to contractors well above the sanctioned budget amount.

As executive engineer, Chobe was required to look after maintenance and repairs of minister's bungalows, the Mantralaya, the High Court building, judges' residence building, MLA hostel, all government buildings and heritage buildings for which contractors were appointed.
After the work is completed by contractors, it is scrutinised by the department and the file is sent to the executive engineer for approval and issuance of cheque. The executive engineer issues a cheque as per the Budget Distribution System (BDS). Behind every cheque leaf is a BDS number which is different in each cheque.
"It is alleged that while discharging his duties as executive engineer, the petitioner (Chobe), mentioned one BDS number on several cheques and issued cheques of more value than mentioned in BDS slips," Chobe's petition filed through advocates Niranjan Mundargi and Mahesh Vaswani stated.

"It is alleged that an amount of Rs 112.58 crore was spent more than that of the sanctioned budget."
Chobe's advocates argued that in a number of cases, repair works are required to be carried out on a priority basis and considering the urgency, pending bills are cleared at the earliest and cheques are issued.