Officials booked for using substandard material in dam

construction Pune, Aug 19 (PTI) Police today filed an FIR against 34persons, including 25 government officials, for allegedlyusing inferior-quality material for constructing the Temghardam here. The move comes after the state’s Water Resources MinisterGirish Mahajan’s recent comment that contractors and officialswho constructed the gravity-based Temghar Dam in Pune, whichhad started developing leakages, would be taken to task. "As per the instructions, a police case has beenregistered against 25 government officials, who were involvedin the construction of the dam and nine officials fromSrinivasa Construction Company and Progressive Construction,for allegedly using inferior material while constructing thedam," said Superintending Engineer of Pune Irrigation Circle,Ishwar Chaudhary. "A case under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 409(criminal breach of trust by public servant), 467(forgery),468 (forgery for cheating), 471 (using forgeddocument as genuine), 420 (cheating), 120B (criminalconspiracy) of IPC has been lodged," said officials from Paudpolice station. "No arrests have been made yet and investigations areunderway," they said. The Temghar dam, is an earth-fill, gravity-based damon the Mutha river near Mulshi in Pune district. It is one ofthe dams which supplies water to the Pune city. Fears were raised about the possibility of a dam burstlike the Panshet dam in Pune district in 1961. Construction work on the Temghar dam began in 1997 andit was completed in 2012 at a cost of Rs 237 crore. Temghar dam has a total storage capacity of 3.71 TMC.PTI SPK NRBCHTJMF