Bengaluru’s big garbage mafia: ACB raids expose BBMP scam with Rs 550 cr in fake bills
On Thursday, the Karnataka Anti-Corruption Bureau raided the BBMP zonal office in Bommanahalli and exposed a massive scam of the garbage mafia by revealing the nexus between the contractors and BBMP officials. Bengaluru’s garbage mafia is an open secret and almost every resident of Bengaluru is disgruntled with the way the civic body – Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike functions. However, despite the knowledge or suspicion of the existence of a garbage mafia, no action was apparently taken till now.
One of the longest investigations conducted by a senior BBMP official within the organisation resulted in the BBMP Bommanahalli Zone’s Joint Commissioner being accused of a fake bills scam of Rs 550 crore.
BBMP Joint Commissioner for Solid Waste Management, Sarfaraz Khan led the investigation for one-an-a-half years and unearthed that fake bills raised towards 6,600 non-existent pourakarmikas and a Rs 384 crore discrepancy in the diversion of insurance and provident fund money of non-existent pourakarmikas, were in the works in the BBMP’s Bommanahalli zonal office, the report stated.
Sarfaraz Khan blew the whistle on the garbage mafia and submitted a report to the BBMP Commissioner Manjunath Prasad, who in turn filed a complaint with the Anti Corruption Bureau on August 19, 2017.
Speaking to TOI, Sarfaraz Khan said that it took him several months to unravel the nexus between garbage contractors and a few BBMP officials. “I was deputed in Yelahanka zone as the zonal joint commissioner and was handling 11 wards. I used to be on the field every morning to check pourakarmikas’ attendance and noticed a variation in the numbers as claimed in the bills. The same exercise was conducted after I was elevated to BBMP’s head office to look after the entire city’s solid waste management,” he said.