P’kula MC orders recovery of Rs 57.14 lakh from 10 firms

Rajinder Nagarkoti

Tribune News Service

Panchkula, February 16

The Panchkula Municipal Corporation has ordered the recovery of Rs 57.14 lakh from 10 companies for using substandard material in the construction of roads in the city in 2014-15.

The MC has submitted a draft chargesheet against seven officials, including six engineers. It has submitted that MC Executive Officer OP Sihag should be chargesheeted under Rule 8 and not Rule 7 as he was not related to the technical wing and did not carry out any technical work. Six engineers, who were from the technical wing, should be penalised under Rule 7.

As per the draft chargesheet, action has been recommended against the then Superintending Engineer, Anil Mehta, retired executive engineer ML Ahuja and the then municipal engineers, Sanjay Goyal, Raj Kumar, Vijay Goel and Maan Dev Singh.

The MC has sent the draft chargesheet to the Haryana Urban Local Bodies Department for action. 

The roads separating Sectors 2, 4, 8 and 9, 11 and 12, 12A, 14, 15 and 16, the internal stretch of Sector 15 and the Industrial Area, Phase I and II, were under the scanner.

The road re-carpeting work courted a controversy after two of the three samples of the material used in the construction work failed the quality test, indicating that substandard material was used in the construction.

The corporation had allotted tenders to contractors in 2015 for the work of repair and recarpeting of roads. The work was flagged off amid much fanfare from the Industrial Area, Phase I, on March 23, 2015, by local MLA Gian Chand in the presence of the Mayor and councillors.

In the first phase, tenders were invited for work valued at Rs 19.28 crore — Rs 7.5  crore for the repair of internal roads in the Industrial Area, Phase I and II, Rs 11.78 crore for the repair of roads separating Sector 14/15,11/12,14/12A, 8/9, 9/10, 15/16 and 2/4, Sector 15 and parts of the 

Mansa Devi Complex, while Rs 10 lakh was kept aside for patch work on paved roads.

  In the second phase, the corporation had prepared an estimate for the repair of other main roads: Rs 5.50 crore for the repair of the main road from the Chandigarh Housing Board (CHB) to Raili village and Rs 5.30 crore for the repair of the road from the Industrial Area, Phase I, to Labour Chowk.

Roads that were under the scanner of civic body

The roads separating Sectors 2, 4, 8 and 9, 11 and 12, 12A, 14, 15 and 16, the internal stretch of Sector 15 and the Industrial Area, Phase I and II, were under the scanner.