Connaught Place Renovation: Rs 595-cr cost escalation in two years

NEW DELHI: The CAG report provides a litany of mismanagement and over expenditure involved in renovation of Connaught Place.

The government’s chief auditor feels it was unreasonable to expect all the work would be completed ahead of the CWG, given the mismanagement and bad project implementation by the New Delhi Municipal Corporation.

The costs of this project escalated nine times, from the initial 2005 estimate of Rs 76 crore, to Rs 671 crore in July 2007. While the project was envisaged in April 2004, the detailed project report was submitted in February 2008. This made it virtually impossible to expect that the extensive work sanctioned in the proposal would be completed before the Games.

The nine-fold rise in costs is explained by NDMC’s decision to increase the scope of the projects, and the cost revision driven at least partly by the projects inclusion under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. For example, in the May 2005 plan, there was no provision for improving subway system in Connaught Place, but it was included by July 2007, resulting in an increased cost of Rs 65 crore.

Other big-ticket items included in the 2007 estimate were underground parking, which meant an additional of Rs 111.99 crore and additional civil and electrical works amounting to Rs 66 crore. The auditor found deficiencies in contract management resulting in avoidable costs from use of unsuitable materials.

The undue delays have been attributed to NDMC’s mismanagement It is, of the view that only those components that could be completed before June 2010, should have been taken up. This would have been the prudent thing to do, especially as the approved project report was submitted as late as February 2008.

“NDMC, however, chose not to follow such an approach,” the report states. NDMC’s decision to start work simultaneously in nine locations resulted in traffic diversions and congestions. CAG has described as illogical the argument proffered by the NDMC that execution of work was delayed on account of non-receipt of clearance from traffic authorities. The report states, “in our opinion, NDMC should have divided the project into manageable packages, so organised as to minimise traffic disruption across the whole of Connaught Place.”