BENGALURU:The Lokayukta police conducted simultaneous raids on the offices of the accounts and town planning sections of Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) on Tuesday.
During the raids, the Lokayukta sleuths found incriminating evidence in the offices of Chief Accounts Officer Kanakaraju and other officials and the additional director and joint director of the town planning section.
According to Lokayukta sources, the raids were conducted on the directions of Lokayukta Superintendent of Police Sonia Narang, Bengaluru, after registering suo motu cases under the Prevention of Corruption Act on the alleged rampant corruption in both the BBMP offices following several complaints.
The search continued till late in the evening and it will continue on Wednesday too. Lokayukta sources said the BBMP Contractors’ Association approached Upa Lokayukta Justice Subhash B Adi on March 24 seeking directions to BBMP to clear pending bills on seniority. They alleged that the chief accounts officer and accounts superintendent were overlooking seniority for a cut. The association had also lodged a complaint with SP Sonia Narang the same day.
After receiving the complaint from Association president R Ambikapathi, Justice Adi had directed both the officials to furnish the details of the number of contractors, pending bills, seniority arrangement, if any, and the list of persons who have already been paid, by March 31. However, the officials failed to comply with the directions.
The complainant had accused Chief Accounts Officer Kanakaraju and Superintendent of Accounts Narayanaswamy of collecting bribes to the extent of 5 to 6 per cent of the bill amount and only those bills for which bribes were paid were cleared indiscriminately. Nearly `500 crore has been paid arbitrarily without due regard to seniority of the pending bills, they alleged.
The officials allegedly harrased the contractors who did not pay bribes by making them run around their offices for a long time, the complainants said.
During the raid on Tuesday, Lokayukta police, led by DySP Venkatswamy, found that the Chief Accounts Officer and the Superintendent of the Accounts were neither clearing the bills nor giving any valid reason for not doing so.
Similarly, Lokayukta police have also take up a suo motu complaint regarding the alleged corruption among Town Planning section officials. Several persons have complained that the officials do not sanction plans and issue occupancy certificates without taking bribes, sources said.