The irrigation scam in Maharashtra came to light after the Economic Survey observed that although Rs 70,000 crore had been spent on various projects in the past decade, the state’s irrigation potential had increased by only 0.1 per cent
The Vijumata Temple situated at the Rajiv Gandhi hills is getting ready for the nine-day Navratri festival. Sunil Suryavanshi, a 23-year-old daily wage earner, says villagers like him desperately need devine intervention this time.
The villagers had expected the Gosikhurd irrigation project in this underdeveloped Vidarbha region of Maharashtra to bring in prosperity in their lives. Instead, the project is floundering in a maze of corruption and cost escalations, showering prosperity only to a section of politicians. “The project will now be delayed, costs will go up further, and development of the region might go for a toss,” says Suryavanshi.
The Gosikhurd project across the Wainganga river in Bhandara district, about 100 kms from Nagpur, was formally inaugurated in April 1988 by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi under the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Project. When it was first conceived in 1982, the project cost was estimated at Rs 372 crore. The time over-run has resulted in the project cost shooting up to Rs 7,000 crore in 2008 and an estimated Rs 13,000 crore now.
It has a sad story throughout: while the projects are nowhere near completion, politicians signed on inflated contracts to benefit private companies.
Jan Manch, an NGO which has filed petition in the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court, says that in comparison to the expenditure of Rs 6,609.64 crore, which is 84.98 per cent of the final cost of the project at Rs 7,777.85 crore, the irrigation potential created is a mere 34,022 hectares or 13.5 per cent of the target of 2,50,800 hectares. In 2010, the Vadnere Committee highlighted gross irregularities right from the tendering process. However, no action was taken.
Advocate Anil Kilor, who represents Jan Manch in court, says: “It is a clear case of bad planning, mismanagement and massive corruption. The cost of 37 out of the 137 major tenders was hiked as per government norms, while the estimated cost of the remaining tenders was arbitrarily raised and done outside the purview of various rules and regulations.”
According to Jan Manch, in most cases, officials “illegally” awarded tenders at 15 to 40 per cent above the original estimates. One of the main excuses for hiking the cost of the tenders was inclusion of taxes such as VAT or excise duty, which were already included in the original estimate.
Then there are allegations of politicians colluding to give undue benefit to contractors and how over a quarter of the project showed lesser thickness than the specified design.
The anger among local villages is palpable. Dhanraj Bavne, a project affected villager and a farmer who is working as a security guard at the irrigation dam, blames it on the unholy nexus between contractors and political bosses.
Bavne says villagers were paid compensation of a mere Rs 10,000 a hectare during land acquisition. The same land now fetches price ranging between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 6 lakh per hectare, while the project continues to flounder. Another small-time contractor says money was never a problem for the project, but the “big sharks” took away the largest chunk of that money, leaving little for the actual work.
An official of the Vidarbha Irrigation Development Corporation says that another Rs 7,000-8,000 crore is needed, but the future is tense as the central government, which had agreed to bear 90 per cent of the project cost, has postponed disbursement indefinitely due to non-completion of the project and non-resolution of issues relating to the rehabilitation of project-affected villagers.
The Goshikurd project also attracted headlines when Bharatiya Janata Party President Nitin Gadkari’s name cropped up. The controversy was that Gadkari wrote a letter to the Union water resources ministry requesting to release funds for the project, in which an associate of his was alleged to be a contractor. But all this means little to P B Datir, deputy engineer at the Gosikhurd project since November 2009. He says that despite repeated reminders on allocation of funds, no action has been taken in the past three years. Datir, who awaits his transfer after completing three years, hopes the ongoing controversies would not overshadow the project benefits.
This is the first of a five-part series on what went wrong in Maharashtra
