Karnataka government ordered probe into Hindalga road works days before Santosh Patil's death

Four days before contractor Santosh Patil killed himself, the Rural Development & Panchayat Raj (RDPR) department had ordered an internal probe to find out how he took up road works in Belagavi without any approvals, documents show.

Patil’s case, in which RDPR Minister K S Eshwarappa is embroiled, also exposes the ‘unscrupulous’ nature of road works in rural areas.

Patil was found dead in a Udupi hotel on April 12, weeks after publicly accusing Eshwarappa of demanding a cut to get Rs 4 crore that he had spent on civil works.

On February 5, Hindalga gram panchayat (GP) president Nagesh Manolkar requested the RDPR department to release funds for 108 works carried out ahead of a local deity’s fair.

“To date, the contractor has neither received bill payment nor work order. The contractor completed works by borrowing loans,” the president said.

Somehow, this letter was received by the RDPR department only on April 5.

Meanwhile, the RDPR department received reports from its local executive engineers on March 28 and 29 that they had not approved any work in the Hindalga GP.

Accordingly, on April 8, RDPR's additional chief secretary L K Atheeq asked the Belagavi Zilla panchayat chief executive officer to submit a detailed report on the following: “What was the basis for the 108 works to be carried out? Were prior technical/administrative approvals given? What is the reason for works being carried out without approval? If works were being done without orders, didn’t it come to the notice of the panchayat officers? Is it possible for works to be done without the knowledge of the officials/engineers concerned?”

When contacted, Atheeq told DH that the department will take this to its logical end.

Sources said the 108 works were done to woo voters to the BJP ahead of the December 2021 election for the Belagavi local authorities seat of the Legislative Council.

“This is an unprecedented case where work was done without any approval,” sources said.

Rural road works are popular with elected representatives to be in the good books of their voters.

“Governance has been reduced to grants for road works,” the sources said.

“Thousands of letters requesting sanction for works are sent. MLAs are under tremendous pressure. There’s a contractor-politician nexus. The works are broken up into pieces, each one costing less than Rs 5 lakh so that tenders need not be called for and can be distributed to hand-picked contractors,” sources said.

Karnataka has a rural road network of two lakh km, of which about 92,000 km are mud stretches.

“So, any contractor can pick a stretch for development, even if the villagers don’t want it,” sources said.

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