Gail Gas scam: Contractor erects signboards and falsely claims to have laid the pipeline!

A major scam is unearthed in HSR Layout where a contractor only erected boards on one side of the road claiming to have laid the underground pipeline which they hadn’t.

The scam was unearthed when Gail Gas officials were trying to give a connection to one house on 15th B Main in Sector 3. Despite digging the road and footpath for half a day, they could not find the pipe that was only mentioned on paper. A senior Gail official monitoring this connection said that the contractor had duped the firm and taken money for a job not done. Interestingly, the contractor had put up boards across 15th B Main, but the pipeline was missing. The yellow boards were clearly falsifying the data.

The residents have seen the pipeline being laid on the Swabhimaana park side of the road, but there were surprised to see the yellow boards vanish from that side and erected on the other side. Now, the Gail gas officials say that they have to again remove the yellow signboards and shift them back to the other side. What is more surprising is that the Gail Gas records don’t have mention of the pipeline being laid on the park side of the road. Only the residents are witnesses to this fact. Did the contractor lay the pipeline on the wrong side of the road? And to avoid getting caught, did the contractor shift the yellow boards to the opposide side without laying the pipeline? Was it the same contractor or different is also not known. Only an impartial enquiry will shed more light on this.

What will Gail do now remains to be seen. As for the new connection that was supposed to be done on this road, the residents have to wait. “We have to take the connection from across the road as the pipeline was laid earlier on this side of the road. This involves putting a request for the machine that needs to drill the road underneath. The work will be delayed by a fortnight.” When asked to clarify the issue, P Guruchandran, DGM (CGD-O&M), Gail Gas Limited (HSR Layout & Jigani) only said that his team is working on the issue.

While this is the case of one road in HSR Layout, one cannot be sure of the other yellow signboards that have cropped up elsewhere in the city. Unless Gail Gas gives a connection, they will never know if the contractor has done their job or duped them of the taxpayers money as Gail Gas is a central government enterprise.