NHAI refers Gurgaon e-way toll collection case to EoW

October 7, 2013

Warning: Undefined variable $thumb in /var/www/web/indiantollways.com/wp-content/plugins/digg-digg/include/dd-class.php on line 887

Dipak Kumar Dash, TNN

NEW DELHI: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Delhi Police will look into the under-reporting of toll collection by Gurgaon expressway operators, which has allegedly caused a Rs 24 crore loss to the NHAI.

EoW officers said there would be raids across the concerned offices and sleuths would collect the accounts register to establish the concessional shares of respective parties.

Alleging this as “breach of trust” NHAI has complained that the operator DGSCL resorted to “dishonesty” by diverting toll for its own use. NHAI has said the concessionaire, its directors, officers and other persons were party to “criminal conspiracy” with intent of fraud.

NHAI referred the case after the highways ministry asked it to lodge a criminal case against the operator as it was first reported in TOI on Tuesday. The ministry had issued this advisory after TOI had reported how a week-long study of traffic flow at 32-lane toll plaza in July had exposed average underreporting of at least 79,000 daily. The daily toll collection was less by Rs 15.58 lakh during that period.

The authority has also alleged DGSCL of committing forgery of valuable securities by making false documents and electronic records, book of accounts etc for underreporting of toll and used them as “genuine”.

NHAI has also said that Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) had directed it in July 2011 to investigate the toll issue and subsequently in December that year they had appointed KPMG to carry out traffic study. NHAI in its complaint to EoW has claimed the operator never cooperated citing some “trivial” reasons until July this year.

“The complaint has just come to us. It suggests that there is a dispute of share distribution of collections. We will have take help of our financial experts in probing this particular matter,” said a senior EoW officer.

DGSCL in a statement again refuted the traffic numbers put by KPMG through their manual counting process. “It appears that KPMG has not done any traffic count study but has only presented the figures provided to them by a third party vendor, which is a security service company. Our toll plazas are equipped with the most advanced automatic vehicle classification and counting (AVCC) system which is completely computerized and there is no scope for human error or intervention. We are scrutinizing the manual data given to us and once the data is proven to be incorrect we would take strong action against the parties responsible for this,” a company spokesperson said.

Source-http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com