The city’s civic body has pending bills to the tune of over ₹2,800 crore. Contractors who have been running pillar to post, protesting, lobbying hard and even approaching the High Court of Karnataka to get their bills cleared, seems to have now lost hopes that their pending bills will be cleared in this financial year.
“The contractors are reeling under huge losses and are caught in a debt trap and we need these pending bills to be cleared immediately. However, from the information we have, the civic body doesn’t have sufficient funds to do so. With pending bills, developmental works are also suffering in the city,” said K.T. Manjunath, president, BBMP Contractors’ Association.
However, a senior civic official claimed that the civic body did have funds, but would start clearing pending bills in tranches only after the State government clears it. “There has been a specific instruction to not clear pending bills till probes into the quality of works are completed. That is the reason we are not clearing pending bills,” the officer said.
