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Indian Express
12 hours ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
Mithi River silt scam: BJP MLC Lad submits evidence to ED, demands probe
In the wake of the alleged financial scam related to the desilting of the Mithi River, Maharashtra Legislative Council Member Prasad Lad visited the Enforcement Directorate (ED) office in Mumbai on Tuesday. During the visit, he held a detailed discussion with the Joint Director and submitted further information related to the case. Lad handed over a pen drive and a set of 500-page documents to the concerned authorities. These contain crucial evidence and paperwork connected to the scam. Lad stated, 'Today I have handed over a pen drive bomb to the ED. The information in this pen drive will lead to many revelations. Our demands are clear — the investigation must proceed in the right direction and the truth about who actually benefited from the Mithi River silt must come out in front of the people.' He added, 'The investigation should not be limited to just the last two years, but should cover the past 15 years. The trail of this scam extends from Mumbai to Dubai, and from Dubai to London.' Every year, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) undertakes a large-scale tendering process to desilt the Mithi River before the monsoon. However, according to Lad, a financial scam amounting to over Rs 1,150 to Rs 1,200 crore has taken place over the last three years, resulting in a massive betrayal to Mumbai's taxpayers. He pointed out that several suspicious schemes were implemented to commit large-scale financial irregularities in the desilting contracts. Terming it a shocking scam, Lad demanded a thorough probe into the role of senior officials involved and stringent action against those found guilty.
Time of India
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Cops ignoring main accused in Mithi scam, says BJP MLC
Mumbai: BJP state vice-president and chief whip of the party in the legislative council, Prasad Lad, at a press conference held on Friday, alleged in the Mithi desilting scam, police are focusing only on the small contractors handling tenders worth Rs 3 crore to Rs 7 crore, while ignoring the main scam and those responsible for it. "Over the past three years, a Rs 1,000 crore scam took place in this process, leading to a major betrayal of Mumbai's taxpayers. The alleged mastermind behind this scam is Prashant Ramghude, a BMC official, who introduced concepts like 'Silt Pusher' and 'Pulse Plasma' memorandums of understanding (MoUs), using them to skillfully orchestrate a massive scam in river desilting contracts," said Lad. Ramghude is one of those named in the FIR as the accused. The Mithi desilting scam is being probed by Mumbai police 's economic offences wing (EOW). The scam involves alleged irregularities in contracts awarded for desilting, leading to a reported loss of over Rs 65 crore to BMC. tnn
Time of India
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
BJP MLC alleges Rs 1,200-1,300 crore corruption in Mithi river desilting during Thackeray's tenure
Live Events (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel BJP MLC Prasad Lad on Friday alleged Rs 1,200-Rs 1,300 crore corruption over the desilting of the Mithi river, claiming irregularities in contracts awarded during the tenure of Uddhav Thackeray as the chief a veiled attack on Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray , the member of the legislative council (MLC) said, "A 'prince' appears to have been involved, but I will not take names without solid evidence.""As per my information, 16 people have been named in an FIR in connection with the corruption in Mithi river desilting. Over the past two years, corruption of Rs 65 crore is suspected. But if you stretch the scope of the probe to last 15 years, it would be Rs 1,200 crore to Rs 1,300 crore," he Economic Offences Wing of the Mumbai police has registered a case over alleged irregularities of Rs 65 crore in the desilting of said the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has claimed that it spent Rs 250 crore to remove 1.5 to 2 lakh tonnes of silt in recent years."Over 15 years, the figure would be nearly 30 lakh tonnes. With that much silt, you could create an area the size of Navi Mumbai. So, where was the silt actually dumped," he BJP leader alleged that the site shown by officials as the dumping ground is now occupied by skyscrappers. This suggests the site was falsely identified in official reports, he claimed."There is no proof of royalty payment for dumping silt at government sites. According to the law, the truck numbers should be listed, but the vehicle (registration) numbers in records are actually of two-wheelers and auto rickshaws. Even the weights of the vehicles have not been recorded. Builders, too, are not paying proper royalty for transporting debris," he also criticised the BMC's use of "biomining" to clean Mithi."Microorganisms were reportedly used to clean the river, but there is no data on how much was cleaned, who did the work, or how it was planned," he MLC alleged inflated billing under the guise of foreign technology."Every time, a new technology from Germany, Italy, France or Spain is shown in the name of river cleaning. If it costs Rs 100, it is rented for Rs 2,000. Middlemen benefit from these deals," he claimed that several contractors have got work despite past concerns. "These companies rose during 2019-2022, when Uddhav Thackeray was chief minister (between 2019 and 2022)," he BJP leader said he recently met Mumbai Police Commissioner Deven Bharti and submitted "relevant information"."The Mithi river flows from Kurla to Mahim, but also reaches someone's house in Bandra. Who lives there," he asked, hinting at Thackeray, whose house 'Matoshree' in Bandra East is close to the to the questioning of actor Dino Morea by the EOW in connection with the case, he asked, "What are his connections to this matter?""Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had sanctioned Rs 1,400 crore for a retaining wall to protect residents from the floods of Mithi. Where is that wall now? It is missing," asked the BJP said, according to his information, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) is taking up the case. He also said, "If anyone from the BJP is involved in this corruption, they must be prosecuted."He said a Special Investigation Team (SIT) was set up by the current Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. Five government officials have been named in the 13 complaints filed so far in connection with Mithi desilting, he firms that were in the catering or hospitality industry before 2019 suddenly became BMC contractors, Lad said. He also questioned why big names were overlooked. "Why were reputed companies like L&T, Ramky Infrastructure Limited or Antony Waste Handling not selected? Instead, these little-known firms got the contracts," he further claimed mismanagement of BMC's rat-killing exercise. "One lakh mice were killed by the BMC. At Rs 100 per mouse, how much corruption does that suggest," he asked.
Indian Express
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
Decode Politics: Can a river desilting ‘scam' change the course of BMC polls?
As the Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the state election commission to go ahead with conducting the long-pending local body polls in Maharashtra, including the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections, Mumbai Police's Economic Offences Wing (EOW) registered an FIR the same day in an alleged scam in the desilting work contracts in the city's Mithi river. The following day, on May 7, two arrests were made. The alleged irregularities took place at the time the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) was in power and could become a poll issue. One of the four rivers that flow through Mumbai city, Mithi originates from Vihar and Powai lakes and meets the Arabian Sea in Mahim. Nearly 18.64 km long, the seasonal river flows along residential-slum pockets and industrial patches. It carries excess water during the monsoon but over the years has become polluted with garbage, sewage, and industrial waste. After the 2005 Mumbai floods, the authorities started making efforts to clean the sludge from the riverbed to ensure uninterrupted water flow. The BMC focused on 11.84 km of the river for desilting work, as the rest of it falls under the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority. The Mahayuti government told the state Legislative Council in August 2024 that a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the EOW was being set up to probe the scam after BJP MLCs Prasad Lad and Pravin Darekar raised questions. The SIT scrutinised the spending of around Rs 1,100 crore on the desilting work between 2005 and 2021. During the exercise, dozens of contractors, middlemen and BMC officials were questioned, and after finding a cognisable offence in the operations of desilting work, the SIT registered its first FIR in the matter against the accused for allegedly causing wrongful loss of over Rs 65.54 crore. The probe team also carried out raids at seven places of the accused. Among those named in the FIR are BMC Storm Water Drains department's assistant engineer Prashant Ramugade; deputy chief engineers Ganesh Bendre and (Prashant) Tayshette, both of whom are now retired; Deepak Mohan and Kishore Menon of Matprop Company; Jay Joshi of Virgo Specialities Pvt Ltd; Ketan Kadam of Vodar India LLP; and contractor Bhupendra Purohit. The directors of five contractor companies — Acute Designing, Kailash Construction Company, NA Construction, Nikhil Construction, and JRS Infrastructure — have also been booked in the case. They have been accused of financial irregularities linked to desilting, transportation of sludge, and dumping it on the ground between 2021-22 and 2022-23. The SIT has accused the contractors, middlemen, and BMC officials of conspiring to include favourable terms and conditions in the contract agreement on silt pusher machines and multipurpose amphibious pontoon machines, thus defrauding the civic body. 'Some contracts do not have proper signatures, some have bogus signatures, in some cases, signatures of owners of (sludge dumping) land are missing, and in some cases, landowners don't know that their identities are being misused for bogus contracts. In one instance, they used the name of a landowner who died 20 years ago,' said SIT member and EOW DCP Sangramsinh Nishandar. The SIT also claims to have found that the accused BMC officials pushed for the machines to be rented from a Kerala-based machine supplier, Matprop Technical Services Pvt Ltd in Kochi, for wrongful gains. The accused engineers allegedly prepared note sheets claiming that the work tenders would mandatorily require these machines, but did not mention anything about the purchase of the machines and indirectly forced the contractors to hire these machines on rent, as Matprop is the only company in India that provides such machinery. It has also been alleged that the annual amount of silt removal was repeatedly increased from the original amount, and the tender amount accordingly. The FIR says that only the sub-engineer determined the silt amount through estimation, with no scientific investigation conducted to determine the amount of silt in the riverbed. The police on Wednesday arrested 50-year-old Kadam and Joshi, 49, seizing electronic devices from the former and copies of posting orders of SWD department officials from the latter. The police also received the notes of entries of money received from the contractors and suspect these might be the record of commissions. In several elections across the country, including in Maharashtra, the BJP has used an anti-corruption plank to take on its opponents and this is likely to happen as the BMC elections approach. The BMC, the country's richest civic body, has been a bastion of the Shiv Sena since 1997, and the coming election will test who comes out on top, the Sena, now under the control of Deputy CM Eknath Shinde, or the Shiv Sena (UBT) of Uddhav Thackeray. It is in this context that the alleged desilting scam and its fallout could become a key factor in the local body election, used by the ruling coalition to target the Sena (UBT) that has said it wants to go it alone in the election and its allies.
