Former CPM Dy mayor demands settings up of SIT for rigging tenders of SJPNL

Shimla, Feb 9 – Former Deputy Mayor of Municipal Corporation Shimla Tikendra Panwar has demanded that Chief Minister Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu set up an SIT to investigate allegations of rigging of tender of Shimla Jal Nigam Parbandhan Limited so that the guilty are sent behind bars.
Panwar has also accused the previous Jairam government of awarding the tender for the work of lifting water from Sutlej to a Gujarat company. The former mayor demanded the dissolution of SJPNL and urged to handover of the work of water distribution in the city to the Municipal Corporation. In a letter to Sukhu, the former deputy mayor said that during his time, before 2017, this project was made through a loan from the World Bank to bring water from Sutlej and this project should have been completed by now, but it did not happen.
The tender or contract agreement was ignored to favor the contractor close to the previous BJP government.
Along with Lakshmi Construction Company, another company from Gujarat was engaged in the work of bringing water from Sutlej to Shimla. Panwar alleged that the cost of the project was revised for the sake of the company. Its cost has been increased from 250 crores to 500 crores. This was a huge loss to the exchequer and huge profits were made for the company. Not only this, the company has written at least two thousand letters to SJPNL to put the matter of project cost in arbitration. But SJPNL has not replied to any letter. When an engineer wrote to the company about the delay in the project, he was immediately removed. He alleged that though these processes had started in 2018, the award for the work was given in 2020. But since then till now water has not reached Shimla from Sutlej and only ten percent work has not been done. He said that the area from Sunni to Shimla is very sensitive to earthquakes and it falls in zone five. In such a situation, construction should be done according to zone five. But this is not being done. In such a situation, it can be estimated that if an earthquake occurs, what will happen to this project.