HYDERABAD

The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) has alleged a ₹500 crore scam in the centralised procurement of groceries, furniture and other material for SC, ST, BC, Minorities and other Residential Schools, Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas and Model Schools.

In an open letter addressed to Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy, BRS MLC and official spokesperson Dasoju Sravan said on Saturday that the Congress Government had introduced centralised procurement under the aegis of State-level project monitoring unit head by the Social Welfare Secretary after scrapping the previous system of district level procurement by a district procurement committee headed by District Collectors.

The State-level procurement had unveiled centralised corruption with the government bigwigs eyeing huge kick-backs. The district level procurement for three months each by a committee headed by District Collector was discontinued with the sole objective of collecting commissions at the State-level, he alleged.

He pointed out that instead of supplying well-known and GI-tagged ‘Tandur’ redgram (tur) dal, the centralised procurement was allowing inferior quality dal imported from African countries. With the mandatory ₹165 crore turnover clause in the new system, the Congress Government had kept aside small traders and women self-help groups from participating in tenders.

The BRS leader sought to know why purchases from the government agency Markfed purchasing crops directly from farmers at support price was not allowed if the centralised procurement was better. The new system was introduced only to benefit private contractors and in turn get huge kickbacks.

He stated that there were allegations of large-scale corruption in the purchase of bunker beds and uniforms done by the State-level project monitoring unit and several cases were already filed in the High Court.