BENGALURU: The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) officials filed a complaint at Halasuru Gate police station against the contractors of Indira Canteens for allegedly misappropriating funds. A senior BBMP official said that there were multiple issues that needed to be looked into including the subsidy being availed and construction errors.
“The contractors presented wrong records of the entry of customers by creating duplicate records. The contractors have shown that a total of 62.72 lakh people ate from 174 Indira Canteens and 15 mobile canteens. However, these figures are not true. Under the subsidy scheme of Rs 32 per day, they have taken a subsidy of Rs 6.88 crore per month by showing wrong figures,” the official said.
Citing an example, the official said, “At the canteen near the BBMP head office, the contractor claimed that 1,400 people eat from here every day. However, investigation shows that not more than a 100 came. Similarly, in case of the canteen near Mantri Mall, where they claimed that 1,700 customers came, in truth, it was not more than a double digit figure. In fact, the eatery next to it fed over 100 people during lunch hours.”
In the case of construction, the contractors have constructed 19 kitchens on ground but have claimed bills for 27 canteens. They claimed to have constructed 198 canteens while only 174 are on ground. The construction of each canteen has cost the exchequer Rs 90 lakh as it was done using precast technology and the construction of each canteen costs Rs 28.50 lakh.