Over Rs. 1 crore spent on enquiry commission before the start of enquiry
6 Mar, 2013The reply to an application under the Right to Information (RTI) Act has revealed that Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) has already invested around Rs. 1 crore on the enquiry commission formed to investigate the illegal allotment of “G” category sites and the probe is yet to begin. The Justice B Padmaraj Commission has been formed by the Karnataka government and the BDA to look into the matter of illegal allotment of “G” category sites from 2006 which cost a huge loss to the State exchequer. The commission consists of three members viz. Justice B Padmaraj (chairman), Justice Ranga Vittalachar (member) and P B Mahishi (member).
As per the reply, each commission member gets a monthly salary of Rs 1.76 lakh apart from which they have also been given special allowance. The commission has also been provided with 16 additional staff drawing salaries in the range of Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 50,000. The reply provided by the BDA also shows that four new cars have been bought for the commission which include three Toyota Corolla Altis (KA-04 ML 4303-05) each costing over Rs. 18 lakhs and one Hyundai Verna (KA 04 ML 8768) costing over Rs. 10 lakhs.
Apart from this two Dell laptops worth Rs. 85,000, five copier machines for Rs. 99,965 and one Xerox machine for Rs. 3.06 lakh have also been bought for the commission. The reply shows that despite having the Xerox machine the commission has reimbursed over Rs. 50,000 for the photo copying of files possessed by BDA.