Chennai: State fisheries minister and AIADMK senior D. Jayakumar has refuted irregularities in awarding contract for maintaining the state highways roads for a period of five years under the ‘Performance based maintenance contract.’
The contract awarded in 2012 – 13 fiscal for maintaining the state highway roads in Coimbatore, Krishnagiri, Ramnad and Tiruvallur districts, for five years, under guidance from the World Bank, is going on smoothly and that there are no irregularities in this contract, he said on Monday. Under the performance based maintenance contract, roads are repaired periodically. In addition, other activities like minor development works, road expansion, building minor bridges, constructing retention walls, establishing rainwater harvesting, are also executed.
“These are going on the right track,” he added. “The '2,083 crore irregularities as alleged by a Tamil newspaper, is false and a mere figment of imagination. There is no iota of truth in it,” Mr. Jayakumar, said and condemned the “false news.”
Earlier, while denying any link between the ruling party and the contractor who was raided last week (SPK group), Mr. Jayakumar, had said, “the contractors were taking contracts during the Jayalalithaa regime also and the I-T department is conducting these searches only after reports of tax evasion. There is no connection between the state government and the contractor. The same contractor was awarded contracts worth crores during the DMK regime also. It is unfortunate that Chief Minister’s relative is dragged into this.”
Asked if the DMK had awarded contracts to the same firm, DMK working president M.K. Stalin, on Monday, said after petitioning Governor Banwarilal Purhoit, “there were no I-T raids during our regime. We did not give contracts to close relatives.”
