Patna: The Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) has show-caused Dharti Dredging and Infrastructure Limited (DDIL) allegedly for furnishing manipulated bills, amounting ₹3 crore, in lieu of dredging the Digha-Majhaua stretch (95km) stretch of the national waterway-1 in river Ganga.
In the show-case letter issued by the deputy director, Jal Marg Vikas Project (JMVP), New Delhi, in December last year, the dredging firm was asked to submit authentic survey data and running account bills, otherwise the contract for ‘fairway maintenance for quality based dredging of Digha-Majhaua stretch’ would be terminated.
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DDIL, a Hyderabad-based Yogayatan Group of companies, was in January 2024 allotted the work to dredge fairway of river Ganga between Digha and Majhaua with least available depth of 2.50 metre and 30 metre wide under the JMVP at the cost of over ₹100 crore. It is part of the fairaway maintenance and dredging of river Ganga, NW-1, from Haldia to Prayagraj project, costing around ₹5369-crore. The World Bank is partially financing the project.
According to the show-cause letter, the IWAI had noticed some discrepancies in the first lot of bills raised for the months of May and June, 2024. A senior officer of the IWAI said that survey data and charts submitted by DDIL don’t appear to be matching with ground work, and hence it was not cleared by the authority. It is said that the firm furnished the bills and got it cleared by the local office at Patna without doing the allotted work.
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“The issue reflects lackadaisical approach of the firm towards fulfilling its contractual obligations in respect of carrying out the dredging works and submission of unauthentic survey data and charts. Further the complete raw data for survey works were also not provided,” the letter stated.
Vice-chairman, IWAI, Sunil Kumar Singh said that bills furnished by DDIL are being verified. He, however, refused to divulge the details over the phone.
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Director, IWAI, Patna, Murugesn DD, said that the bills are under the process of clearance. He also refrained from making any statement on the activities of Dharti Dredging and Infrastructure Ltd saying that he was not authorised to speak. Repeated attempts made to talk to a local official of the dredging company on the issue failed to yield any result.
With the dredging firm adopting a dilly-dallying approach in replying to formal queries, a probe team of experts from IWAI carried out the field inspection in the second week of January and collected the work related data from the local office for further verification.
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Earlier in 2018-19, the IWAI had blacklisted DDIL for a period of two years on the charges of submitting false bank guarantees against the earnest money. The water resources department of Bihar had also blacklisted the dredging company in 2015 for its acts of omission and commissions and held up the payment of work, against which the company had filed a writ in the Patna high court.