MCD officials not interested in completing abattoir project: SC

The Supreme Court on Tuesday pulled up the MCD for misleading it on infrastructure development for the commissioning of an ultra-modern abattoir in the Capital, the deadline for which has been extended repeatedly due to a dispute between the civic body and a private contractor. "The MCD filed wrong affidavit and its officers are not interested in completing the project," a Bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhan said reacting to a report filed by L P Srivastava, Chief Engineer, CPWD, who was asked to inspect the project site of slaughter house in Ghazipur in east Delhi. The report raised questions related to the provision for electricity and water in the slaughter house and said the contractor had not started work in the area where fire fighting work had been completed by the MCD. One of the major bottleneck in the smooth execution of project is the absence of qualified project manager which at present is a veterinary doctor, the report said. The deadline for the completion of the project was July 2006 which was extended several times due to a dispute between the MCD and contractor. As per the revised deadline the slaughter house was to be operationalised next month. The Bench, also comprising Justices S B Sinha and A K Mathur, asked the MCD to respond to the report and posted the matter for further hearing tomorrow saying "we do not want to delay the project." It declined to give more time to the civic body for filing a response and its counsel Sanjib Sen said he will answer court's query after taking instruction from MCD officials. The Court had earlier revised the cost of the much-delayed slaughter house in east Delhi and fixed it at Rs 123.26 crore. The construction of the abattoir, which was initially planned to be completed by June 2006, got mired in a controversy when MCD in 2004 abruptly decided to increase its animal handling capacity from 2,500 per day to 5,000 per day allegedly without the upward revision of the earlier estimated project cost of Rs 65 crore. Later, an MCD-appointed expert committee fixed the revised cost of the project at Rs 106.26 crore but it was disputed by the contractor, Food Processing Equipments Company Ltd (FPECL), seeking Rs 150 crore for the project. The contractor had expressed his difficulty in completing the work at the cost of Rs 113.26 fixed by the IL&FS and later the apex court asked the MCD to pay an additional Rs 13 crore to the FPECL.

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