Region’s first Bird Aviary in Forest area, out of zoo, has fallen under the scanner of financial fraud. The under construction project ‘Bird Aviary’ situated inside City Forest adjoining Sukhna Lake surfaced with a major financial jumble by Chandigarh Forest and Wildlife Department. The Audit Department clearly says in its official report that the expenditure being made on this project is not justified and if in future anyone moves to court against the department, the latter would have no answer to these financial flaws. This case has been revealed by My Tree Foundation founders Prem Garg, Rahul Mahajan, and environmentalist Ashok Tiwari on Thursday.
These financial flaws, that have surfaced under General Finance Rule 2017, says, “In order to initiate any construction, the department has to sign a contract agreement with the agency hired for construction services.”
“Despite these rules, on 10 January 2020, the Chief Conservator of Forest Office of the department of Chandigarh Forest and Wildlife initiated an e-tender for the “Fabrication work of the Bird Aviary” and did not sign any agreement with the Disha Associates before allotting Rs 3.38 crore of work allotment to them on 2 March 2020,” says Garg.
UNDUE FAVORS TO DISHA ASSOCIATES BY THE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL
In this period, the Department of Forest and Wildlife favored Disha Associates blindly. This can be seen as Disha Associates submitted Rs 16.90 lakh as performance guarantee and has to renew it after 28 February 2021 but Disha Associates did not resubmit the money and renew the performance guarantee that is a clear loss to the government treasury. “Besides these favors, the department did not levy any fine on the agency as the latter did not complete the project within the time limit which was 2 September 2020 and did not even relax the time limit for the agency on the official documents. There is exaggerated use of 37.348 metric ton steel without permission,”says Mahajan.
Interestingly, there was an estimate of using 256.78 metric tons of steel in constructing the structure of Bird Aviary, whereas the Disha Associates claim to have used 37.348 metric ton above the estimated figure and for this, the agency has spent 14.54 percentage of more expenditure of the sanctioned budget without seeking any prior permission.
PERTURBATION IN FOUNDATION OF BIRD AVIARY
There has been evident perturbations in the construction of foundation of Bird Aviary as well as this job was too allotted to Disha Associates for which the department of Chandigarh Forest and Wildlifedid not levy any condition of performance guarantee which is standing as an outstanding of Rs 39.05 lakh.