Congress Levels Kickback Charge Against Patnaik

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee on Tuesday accused the state government of favouring non-Odia contractors to receive kickbacks.

OPCC campaign committee chairperson Bijay Kumar Patnaik said the tender process of the Odisha government for awarding the work contracts is highly tilted in favour of the non-Odia work contractors and the Odias have little avenues to qualify for availing high-value work contracts.

“In the past few years, the Odisha government has awarded work contracts worth over Rs 35,000 crore for rural drinking water supplies. However, 96 per cent of these work contracts have been given to non-Odia contractors hailing from states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. It’s because the annual turnover of a firm to be eligible to get a work contract of Rs 100 crore project was fixed at Rs 262 crore. Such a hefty turnover benchmark was deliberately fixed to deny the Odia contractors the opportunity to qualify for the work contracts,” said Mr Patnaik.

He cited a number of examples where small work contracts were put together as one project so as to enable the outside contractors to bid for them.

“Never before in Odisha, was such nefarious bunching practice followed with an ulterior motive to help the non-Odia contractors. We suspect huge kickbacks behind such dubious deals. Hence, we demand a proper probe by the Lokayukta. We dare the ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) to come clean on this matter by handing over the probe to the Lokayukta. Or else, we’ll knock the door of  Lokayukta,” said the campaign committee chairperson.

Odisha Pradesh Congress president Sarat Pattanayak said he doubted if the state government had examined the expertise of outside contractors and the work executed by them.

“Many of the works were awarded four-five years ago. As many of them were not completed as per the schedule, the project costs of those projects have substantially escalated, causing unwarranted losses to the state exchequer,” said the OPCC chief.

He questioned why the state government did not go for global tendering. “One wonders why the state government did not go for global tenders. Is it because it wanted to favour a handful of contractors?” asked Mr Pattanayak.