Gurugram: Four pvt agencies booked for fraud in street vending zones

Gurugram, Aug 20 A case of alleged embezzlement of crores of rupees has come to light in the garb of creating street vending zones in Gurugram.

During an internal inquiry conducted by the officials of the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG), it was found that four agencies not only defrauded the Corporation of crores of rupees but also cheated people in the name of setting up street vending zones in the city.

On the complaint of R.C. Bishnoi, Additional Commissioner of the MCG, a case of fraud and other illegalities under relevant sections of the IPC has been registered against the four agencies at the City police station in Gurugram.

According to the complaint, the civic body had earmarked places for street vendors in the city under the Street Vendors Act 2014; including registration for setting up street vending zones at a place approved by the MCG. For police verification of street vendors, cleaning the area and security by installing CCTV cameras, four agencies M/s Spic & Span Pvt Ltd, Leo Mediacom, M/s Egmac Pvt Ltd and Nasvi Street Foods Pvt Ltd were chosen.

The agencies were asked to collect a service charge of Rs 1,500 per street vendor, out of this, a charge of Rs 500 per person was to be deposited with the MCG, while the remaining Rs 1,000 was to be kept by the agency for providing these facilities.

Bishnoi told the police that the corporation had received a complaint that these companies were extorting Rs 50,000 to one lakh rupees from the people in the name of street vending zones. Even after taking this amount, they were neither being given street vendors zones approved by the Corporation nor was their money being refunded.

During the investigation, all the allegations against the agencies were found to be true.

According to officials, these agencies also defrauded the MCG of revenue. The investigation found that M/s Spic & Span Company owes about Rs 2.41 crore, M/s Egmac about Rs 1.90 crore, M/s Leo Mediacom about Rs 2.68 crore and M/s Nasvi Streat Foods about Rs 7 crore to the MCG.

Despite repeated attempts, officials of these companies could not be reached for comment.