Around 70 consultants including international and domestic ones will stop all project-related work from 1 August.
Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has sacked all consultants appointed for the construction of capital city of Amaravati. Around 70 consultants including, international and domestic ones will stop all project-related work from 1 August.
Among those laid off, is the M/s Norman Foster consultants, a UK based architecture firm and a half a dozen more firms from Singapore and Malaysia. These consultants were working since Naidu commenced the project in 2014.
For the past five years, these firms were responsible for designing the city and preparing layouts of major streets and buildings.
In notices issued towards the last week of July, Jagan government through the Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) told the consultants to cease working as there was no clarity in the work they had done till now. A high level committee appointed by Jagan to revisit all contracts awarded by the Naidu regime had found several irregularities in the consultancies of Amaravati.
The committee, acting on the behest of YSR Congress and probing large scale corruption and irregularities in the project, found that most of the consultants had been whiling away their time and wasting public money, according to sources in the CRDA. The government has pooled up around 33,000 acres of land from farmers to build Amaravati over an area of around 800 sq km.
The CRDA, revamped after Jagan became the CM two months ago, has changed its mind on most of the aspects of the capital city construction and is keen on doing away with the decisions of the previous TDP government. The Naidu regime had appointed close to 50 consultants in the CRDA while another 30 in the Amaravati Development Corporation Limited (ADCL), a state owned firm.
In its probe, the committee discovered that the government has paid Rs 329 crore to these consultants so far, and another 140 crore is yet to be paid as their bills are pending with the CRDA and ADCL. All the consultants have been working from the offices provided on the premises of CRDA in Guntur district.
Now, CRDA has decided to stop further payments to these firms and called for a report from them on their work since they signed the agreements. “Most of the consultants have entered into the project through backdoors, meaning based on the recommendations of another existing firm and there is no transparency in their appointment,” said an official from CRDA.
The committee also found that these consultants had visited foreign cities on government fund and had prepared maps and layouts. As most part of the city project awaits funds from the Centre or other financial institutions and the construction is yet to begin, the architectural maps have been gathering dust, an official explained.
The CRDA officials, however, clarified that the government doesn’t intend to remove all the consultants and firms associated with the capital city. “After a review of the situation, we will retain some of them, if they found to be suitable for the project, and the rest would be sacked,” said an official in the municipal administration department. Again this development is fraught with legal and diplomatic consequences. As around a dozen of the firms removed from the project are foreign based, they might knock the doors of their embassies and bring up the issue to the notice of the Centre.
Currently, Amaravati construction has been halted as the government is reviewing the progress. CM Jagan has decided to cancel all the works which haven’t yet been commenced or stop payments for works which were below 25 per cent of the completion. “We are studying the Amaravati project in detail,” said Municipal Administration Minister Botsa Satyanarayana.
As usual, the opposition TDP lashed out at the Jagan government and termed the decision as “retrogressive”. “We don’t know what the government intends to do with the capital city project. This decision will only dent the image of Amaravati and delay the city building,” said TDP MLC Budda Venkanna.