Though it comes a little late in the day, the Public Accounts Committee has decided to extensively probe the Jalayagnam irrigation projects after serious allegations of corruption during the YSR regime have surfaced. The PAC’s decision coincides with the Comptroller and Auditor General taking up a special drive against financial irregularities in Jalayagnam.
Sources told this newspaper that the accountant general, Ms Vani Sriram, informed the PAC of her organisation’s efforts to prepare a special report pertaining to Jalayagnam projects. The PAC, which met here on Tuesday, took up for the first time the auditor’s objections of the irrigation department. Issues that came up for discussion were the delay in the Pulichintala project and the contractor making undue profits by violating the agreement, lack of monitoring of the Krishna and Godavari delta modernisation work, and the huge variation in the interest levied on contractors crores of rupees paid as advances for the projects.
According to sources, Congress MLA K. Kanna Babu sought to know the rationale behind reducing the interest to be levied on the advances given to a contractor in the Kalwakurthy irrigation project, from 12 per cent to eight per cent.
PAC unmoved, seeks report from secretary
Principal irrigation secretary Aditya Nath Das explained to the Public Accounts Committee on Tuesday that the irrigation department entered into agreements with the contractors in which a particular rate of interest was mentioned. The government subsequently took a decision that the finance department would fix the rate of interest based on market conditions. In several cases the contractors paid more interest than what was mentioned in the agreement, he added. The PAC members, however, were not convinced with the explanation and asked the department to submit a comprehensive report on the amount of mobilisation advance given in each project, the recovery rate and interest charged from each contractor. They wanted a comparative study of the implementation of the Engineering, Procurement and Construction system with other states.