BJP leaders accuse Akali minister of Rs100 cr fraud

Monday, 27/07/2015

http://www.indiapress.org/gen/news.php/The_Tribune/

Chandigarh : Trouble between the Akalis and their coalition partner BJP seems to be unending with a senior BJP leader today alleged a Rs100 crore advertisement fraud in Ludhiana involving influential Akali Minister.

Parveen Bansal, Ludhiana district president of the BJP, along with five party councillors told the media today that an advertising company, Greenline Advertisers, had misappropriated the tax payers money by using MC land beyond their allotted period of 2009-13 and later getting a report in their favour that the company was not given due space for advertising in the said period. Bansal alleged the total loss was over Rs100 crore.

Bansal and the councilors — Inder Aggarwal, Sarbjit Singh Kaka, Narinder Singh Malhi, Devinder Jaggi, Sumit Malhotra and BJP district vice-president Jatinder Mittal said the company used three times more space than what was allotted to it. They alleged the company tampered with the space figures by showing bigger dimension of bus shelters and unipoles besides other places earmarked for advertisements.

Showing documents Bansal alleged that the company was blacklisted in 2008, but it still got the tender in 2009 allegedly due the political influence of the Akali leader. He said undue and illegal favours were given to the company by including bus shelters in the contract whereas these were included in the tender bid. He said a bus shelter of about 175 sq feet was shown as 500 sq feet.

Bansal said he was flagging the issue at several forums, but the Akali minister always succeeded in suppressing it. He said the involvement of MC officials came to the fore when they prepared “weak” defence in court against the company’s claim of seeking refund from the MC for not getting the promised space for advertising. яндекс

“It is shocking that the MC is now returning Rs6 crore to the company,” he alleged.

A spokesperson of the company refuted the allegations. He claimed the facts were contrary as the company had in fact lost its investment in the bargain. “Local bodies Minister Anil Joshi is already looking into the allegations levelled by us,” he said. “Before signing the contract, we had told the Ludhiana MC to hand over the area of bus shelters (which were part of the bid of Traffic Media) against which we had bid to increase the offer from Rs5 crore to Rs8.25 crore,” he added.