Members of the Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking management committee on Wednesday demanded a white paper from the BEST management, that would highlight all the transactions between BEST and private real estate builders.
The move came a day after state minister of urban development – Eknath Shinde said in the state assembly that six private developers owed Rs 160 crores to the transportation body.
During the committee meeting on Wednesday, members of the management committee said that they had no idea about the pending amounts and that the management should provide a white paper on the issue.
Prakash Gangadhare – member of the committee and Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) corporator raised the issue saying that these private builders had used the premises of seven BEST depots including the Mahim, Vesova and Goregaon for their benefits and hadn’t paid the due amount to the cash strapped transport body.
“The members of the BEST committee have been kept in darkness about this matter. At a time when the undertaking is suffering huge losses, the management should have tried in recovering the money instead of hiding the matter from all of us,” said Gangadhare.
“When we appealed to the management regarding this matter, the management said the matter is in court…which is why we have asked for detailed report on the matter in the next meeting,” Gangadhare added.
Senior BEST member – Sunil Ganacharya claimed the due amount is much more than Rs 160 crores.
“The BEST management does not maintain any transparency. The figure mentioned by the state minister in the state assembly has been given by the BEST management, but irony is that we were only not aware of these figures earlier,” Ganacharya said.
BEST committee chairman, Praveen Shinde said that all the members had unanimously supported the proposal of a white paper and that he had forwarded the appeal to the management.
“Many of the management thinks the actual pending figures are more than Rs 160 crores so I have forwarded their demand asking the management to produce all the details of transaction in next meeting,” Shinde told FPJ.
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