The Hindu : New Delhi News : NGOs see red in Jal Board assets' under-valuation

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Feb 18, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

NGOs see red in Jal Board assets' under-valuation

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, FEB.17. The Rashtriya Mukti Morcha and the All India Crime Prevention Society today filed a complaint with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) seeking registration of a First Information Report (FIR) against the Delhi Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, private consultants Price Waterhouse Cooper and the Delhi Jal Board CEO, Rakesh Mohan, for "hatching a conspiracy" to siphon off Rs. 40.5 crores in the garb of valuation of fixed assets of the Board much below their original value.

The representatives of the two NGOs met the CBI Director today and submitted their complaint alleging under-valuation of assets of the Board, properties, fixtures and fittings to the prospective buyers in league and collusion with certain unknown persons.

Addressing a press conference here along with former Delhi Chief Minister Madan Lal Khurana, who was the first one to allege under-valuation of assets and reported attempts by the Delhi Government to privatise the generation, treatment and supply of water in the Capital under pressure from the World Bank, the representatives of the two NGOs said they would be forced to knock at the doors of the court if no action was taken on their complaint.

The RSS president, Ravinder Kumar, and the All India Crime Prevention Society general secretary, Sandhya Sharma, said they had been forced to take up the issue on behalf of lakhs of water consumers after attempts to get a clear picture on the issue from the Delhi Jal Board failed. Describing the whole situation as "dubious", they said that despite strong denials by the Chief Minister, every step indicated that the exercise for privatisation of the Board had already been initiated.

The petition states that the total valuation of the Jal Board was Rs. 76,000 crores. It had been grossly under-valued at Rs. 1,500 crores by the private consultant Price Waterhouse Coopers. It is alleged that this had been done with the ulterior motive of selling the Jal Board to private parties in the coming months. The Jal Board had paid Rs. 14 crores to the private consultant for this under-valuation that was an imaginary exercise. Another Rs. 10.5 crores had been paid to measure the water pipelines and Rs. 16 crore to measure the sewer lines.

The two NGOs have also alleged that the valuation document had been kept a closely guarded secret and nothing was being made available to the public. "What is even more shocking is that the private consultant has evaluated the entire assets of Jal Board at Rs. 629 per square metre. Interestingly, the Jal Board headquarters at Jhandewalan had been valued at Rs. 80 lakhs whereas its market value should be more than Rs. 100 crores," they said, adding that "all the above facts make it clear that a conspiracy was being hatched to sell the Jal Board at a throwaway price as was done with the Delhi Vidyut Board and therefore the Delhi Government had to be stopped from selling public assets. The CBI should register a case and launch investigations to bring out the truth how a public sector undertaking was being sold off for peanuts."

The Chief Minister, on the other hand, has time and again maintained that the Delhi Jal Board is not being privatised and the valuation exercise had been conducted to get a first hand knowledge of where the authorities stand.

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