Mumbai:Social activist Medha Patkar has claimed that more evidence has surfaced linking payment of bribes to top politicians of Maharashtra and their associates by contractors executing water supply and irrigation projects.
The National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), headed by Patkar, has alleged that “some of the beneficiaries are Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, former Bharatiya Janata Party president Nitin Gadkari, BJP leader Gopinath Munde, MLAs Sunil Deshmukh and Vijay Vadettiwar and their associates.”
Both Pawar and Munde have described Patkar’s allegations as “baseless.”
According to the NAPM, when the irrigation scam, that included the controversial Gosikhurd dam project in Vidarbha, was exposed last year, names of several politicians had surfaced. However, their direct involvement in ‘receiving bribes’ was not proved. “We have now gathered fresh set of papers which clearly show payment of ‘speed money’ to powerful politicians,” she said. Pawar also said the charges were based on a report by the Deputy Commissioner of Income Tax (Central) Circle, Kolhapur.
“The Income Assessment report based on documents, diary and papers seized from residences of Director of Mahalakshmi Infrastructure, Dhirendra Anant Bhat, show fine details of who all were paid and how during the pre-tendering process for garnering the contracts,” Patkar said.
In just one branch canal project of Gosikhurd, with an estimated cost of Rs2.87 billion, Pawar, who is referred as ‘Dada’ and also as A.P. in certain seized pages, with amounts and details as dates tallying with each other, took the largest of share, Rs275 million, that is 10 per cent of the total project estimate — the ‘normal’ rate for ‘speed money’ popularly known and taken as indispensable.
“Nitin Gadkari and Gopinath Munde were also paid about Rs5 million and Rs2 million respectively.”
“Details of ‘payments’ worth Rs438.5 million were obtained from Bhat who ultimately admitted and so did the Chairman and Managing Director of MIL, Ravindra D Shinde that those payments ranging from Rs100,000 to millions to each of the persons named by initials or short forms, with designations or nick names, were indeed made during the period of 2-3 years until the raid on 23-9-2009 and thereafter.”
