IN A LETTER dated 25th January, 2001, the Vigilance Department which is under the direct control of the Chief Minister, Manohar Parrikar, let off the hook all those implicated in the St Inez nallah tender scam. Including the then Chairman of the Panjim Municipal Council, Ramesh Silimkhan. The irony of the situation is that it was Manohar Parrikar, the crusading opposition MLA, who had dubbed the very same St Inez nallah tender a downright fraud in his deposition before the Goa Public Men's Corruption Commission.

  The story of the transformation or degeneration of Manohar Parrikar from a combative and conscientious Opposition MLA to a corrupt and conniving politician solely preoccupied with retaining his kodel goes back to the year 1997. At the instance of Manohar Parrikar, the then Panjim MLA and the then Taleigao MLA, Somnath Zuwarkar, the Director of Municipal Administration decided to issue tenders on behalf of the Chairman of the then Municipal Corporation, Ramesh Silimkhan,  for improvement of the St Inez nallah leading from Tonca, Caranzalem, to the old Goa Medical College.

  The Director of Municipal Administration estimated the cost of desilting the St Inez nallah which included removing the silt and depositing it at some distance from the nallah at Rs 66,66,470. The work order was issued by the Chief Officer of the Panjim Municipal Council to M/s. Bhavikara Constructions, Khadpaband, Ponda for a tender amount of Rs 48,65,250.14. Which was 24.99 per cent below the estimated cost. And as the evidence presented by the complainant, Dharma Chodankar, the then General Secretary of the MGP reveals, Bhavikara was fraudulently awarded the tender. There were seven parties who tendered for the job. As per the CPWD norms the name of the engineer had to be mentioned in the tender document. Except for one tender which was disqualified because the amount quoted was too high, none of the other tenders had the name of the engineer.

In the case of M/s. Bhavikara Construction the name of the engineer was given as one Mr Lemos. Except that engineer Lemos, being a regular teacher at the Agnel Polytechnic at Verna, was prohibited by law from signing the tender document. Since engineer Lemos was not legally entitled to sign the tender document, the tender form of Bhavikara should have been rejected, treating this name as a fraudulent insertion. But the then chairman of the PMC blindfoldedly  accepted the Bhavi-kara tender, raising legitimate doubts that the award of the tender was due to patronage coupled with fraud. This is not our conclusion. It is the opinion of advocate C.F. Alvares, a member of the Commission.

The scam does not stop here. In fact the manner in which the tender was awarded is only the tip of the iceberg. It was apparently decided that a supervisory committee should be appointed to monitor the execution of the tender. The supervisory panel was officially formed only on 14-4-1998. Strangely, however, it was claimed that the supervisory panel which comprised of the then Panjim and Taleigao MLAs Manohar Parrikar and Somnath Zuwarkar and four councillors are reported to have had a meeting on 6-4- 1998, seven days before it was officially formed. And apparently at the instance of Manohar Parrikar the contractor was asked to undertake additional work of the value of Rs 19 lakhs without approval either from the PMC or the concerned technical authority, the Irrigation Department.

Greater Scam

The greatest scam relates to the manner in which the contractor went about his assigned task of desilting the St Inez nallah and removing the silt from the site. According to the deposition of the then Panjim MLA, Manohar Parrikar, while the contractor had carried out the work of desilting according to the specifications laid down, he had failed to remove the silt from the site as required of him. Manohar Parrikar is on record that the contractor caused considerable loss to the public exchequer. Manohar Parrikar had also in his testimony to the commission accused the authorities of evasion in that he was not given a copy of the work order despite being a member of the supervisory committee.

Manohar Parrikar, who has always prided himself on his mathematical genius, argued very persuasively that the estimated cost was grossly inflated. Parrikar reportedly pointed out that the cost of desilting the nallah which extended to a length of 2.6 kilometres would not require more than Rs 30 lakhs, even by the most liberal estimates. Parrikar also reportedly pointed out that the contractor could not have completed the removal of the silt from the site as claimed by him. Quoting figures Parrikar had pointed out that assuming that each truck could carry five cubic metres of extracted silt and given the quantity of silt was 50,000 cubic metres it would require 10,000 trips to remove the silt! Since the contractor had only four trucks, and the period over which the desilting was reported to have been carried out was only 60 days, each truck would have to make 42 trips a day, which was not humanly possible. Parrikar concluded that “the alleged quantity of desilting therefore is a downright fraud.”

Drastic Change

But apparently when Manohar Parrikar became the Chief Minister his priorities and his perception of the St Inez tender scam changed dramatically. In August 2000 Gopal Tamba former treasurer of  the MGP wrote to Manohar Parrikar who had then become the Chief Minister demanding an inquiry into the ST Inez nallah tender scam based on the recommendations of the Goa Public Men’s commission report dated 15-4-1999. In his letter, Gopal Tamba, quoting Parrikar’s own statements before the Commission asked the Chief Minister to issue directions to investigate into the matter of misappropriation in awarding the tender and to punish those who were found guilty in causing pecuniary loss to the public exchequer. Tamba demanded a CBI inquiry into the malpractices in order to enable the government to take appropriate disciplinary, criminal and civil action. Despite this, in the interim period the entire contract amount of  Rs 48,65,250.14 was paid to the contractor and we understand that even his bill for Rs 19 lakhs for additional work undertaken unauthourisingly was also settled. Despite clear directions from the Goa Public Men’s Corruption Commission recommending that the amount should not be paid.

Mr Tamba received a response to his letter dated august 2000, only on January 25th, 2001. The letter was not from the Chief Minister, Manohar Parrikar, but from the Deputy Director (Vigilance) Swapnil M Naik. It may be noted that the Vigilance Department is directly under the charge of the Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar,  so presumably the reply was approved and had the sanction of the Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar. The reply exposes the double standards of Parrikar, the Opposition MLA, and Parrikar, the Chief Minister.

According to the reply from the Vigilance Department, the Additional Chief Engineer Irrigation, S D Sayanak, based on the report of the Senior Technical Examiner, insisted that the lapses of the contractor could not be confirmed because the measurements taken by the  PMC engineers responsible for monitoring the execution of the work could not be relied upon. The Additional Chief Irrigation Sayanak also pleaded helplessness pointing out that since he had been called upon to enquire into the matter one year after the execution of the work it was not possible for him to offer a firm opinion. This is because one monsoon season had passed after the execution of the work and it was likely that the monsoon flow must have carried silt into the nallah. So much so if the level was taken after the monsoon it may not tally and the same could be contested.  The extent of silt removed could not be estimated as the contractor had not stacked it at a particular place. Never mind that the allegation is that the contractor stacked the silt on the sides of the nallah and that it may have flowed back into the nallah when the monsoons came.

PASSING The Buck

Consistent with the practise of passing the buck to petty officials, the letter from the Vigilance Department informed Mr Tamba that the then junior engineer, Peter Barretto, of the Irrigation Department and P J Kamat, the then Municipal engineer, had been warned to be more cautious in the future. Apparently a circular was also issued to all the municipal councils and other government bodies that similar work contracts, as far as possible should be entered into on a turn-key basis.

The whole manner in which Manohar Parrikar as Chief Minister has dealt with the charges made by Manohar Parrikar as the Oopposition MLA gains significance in the context of the allegations made in respect of IFFI and more specifically the desilting of the Mala lake. It will be recalled in the run-up to IFFI in a jiffy and all through the monsoon truck loads of silt from Mala lake were dumped in an arbitrary manner at various places, including the Campal parade ground. How much was the value of the tender awarded for desilting and removal of the silt from the Mala lake? How much did the government spend on removing the silt from the Campal parade ground and other impromptu dumps? Were the expenses recovered from the contractor? Were the CPWD guidelines strictly followed in the case of other IFFI related works like the multiplex at the old GMC complex and the Kala Academy? Or were the tenders awarded in the same fashion as that of the St Inez nallah? And did engineer Lemos or some other counter part of his working in some other government department certify the technical details of the tenders relating to the desilting of Mala lake and IFFI infrastructural works?

Match Fixing

The inescapable conclusion is that Manohar Parrikar as Chief Minister is extremely tolerant if not totally indulgent towards corruption, unlike Manohar Parrikar, the hyperactive, vociferous, vehement Opposition MLA. Manohar Parrikar is a classic example of the maxim that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The 64-billion dollar question is why is Manohar Parrikar, the Chief Minister, so reluctant to take action against the former chairman of the Panjim Municipal Council, Ramesh Silimkhan,  who is both morally and legally responsible for awarding the tender and permitting the contractor to get away with shoddy work, thereby causing enormous loss to the exchequer? The answer is political. The former chairman of the PMC helped Manohar Parrikar to win the last assembly elections in a case of match fixing. He helped to split the votes to benefit  Parrikar. And presumably Ramesh Silimkhan knows too much about the financial jugglery engaged in by Manohar Parrikar in IFFI-related projects to antagonise him.

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