Every day new scandals are taking place in the state of Karnataka. Asserting a wide-scale misuse of public money in carrying out civic works by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (or the BBMP), the Bengaluru NavaNirmana Party (BNP) on Tuesday came out with what they call the ‘4g’ scam. They found the BBMP and the state government to be misusing Section 4(g) of the Karnataka Transparency in Public Procurements (KTPP) Act to award contracts to Karnataka Rural Infrastructure Development Ltd (KRIDL) without any tender process. 

A battle took place between a minister of Karnataka and a BJP MLA over this issue

BNP said that while Rs 10,018 crores worth of ward-level work has been completed or is under completion beginning from 2015, Rs 4,721 crores worth of work has been given to KRIDL without any tender process. Section 4(g) of the KTPP Act states that The provisions of Chapter II (Regulation of Procurement) shall not apply to the procurement of goods and services in respect of specific procurements as may be notified by the government from time to time.”

Legislature Session of Karnataka to be shortened due to this reason!

Sidhartha Shetty, Padmanabha Nagar zonal leader of BNP, said, “We are calling this the Bengaluru 4g scam as Clause 4(g) in KTPPA was intended to give exceptions to the tendering process for specific type of procurements which might have some kind of specialization. However, this clause has been completely abused by successive BBMP Councils to give blanket exemptions to KRIDL to execute all types of projects including roads, drains, cameras, lights, etc.” While KRIDL is a government agency, the charge of misuse of money has been leveled as the KRIDL gets a commission ranging between 3% and 10% for subcontracting the work without providing any technical inputs.

Karnataka's Udupi district gets triggered by a minor landslide