A video of a departmental meeting in Madhya Pradesh has surfaced, showing Additional Chief Secretary of the Urban Development and Housing Department Sanjay Dubey confronting officials of urban local bodies over alleged irregularities in government purchases and warning them that the department is monitoring them.In the recent meeting, Dubey cited instances of garbage vehicles being purchased at vastly different prices by various civic bodies, questioned the need for some municipalities to buy vehicles worth crores of rupees, and warned chief municipal officers against assuming that their purchases would go unnoticed.The presentation accompanying his remarks cited purchases worth Rs 1,134 crore through the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) by 374 urban local bodies over three years, with an estimated Rs 250 crore in potential savings had the goods been purchased at average prices.“You think that you have bought this or bought that, and nobody has any idea about it. I am telling you that we know what you have bought, where you have bought it, in what quantities and at what rates,” Dubey told officials.Citing the example of garbage vehicles, he said: “One bought a garbage vehicle for Rs 2 lakh, while another urban local body bought the same vehicle for Rs 6 lakh, along with four dustbins. They added four dustbins.”Dubey said the department was now taking action against officials over such purchases.The ACS also questioned purchases of garbage vehicles worth as much as Rs 1.5 crore by some civic bodies, despite doubts over whether they had enough wards to operate them.Story continues below this ad“Several people have purchased garbage vehicles worth Rs 1.5 crore, even though they do not have enough wards to operate that many vehicles. The vehicles have been booked and purchased, but where they are operating, whether they are being used somewhere else, we do not know,” he said.‘Won’t overlook such cases’Making clear that the department would no longer overlook such cases, Dubey told officials: “Last year, I did not pay much attention to this. But from this year, this will not be condoned. I am making that absolutely clear to you.”When contacted, Dubey’s office said, “This is a regular monitoring exercise in which there is a study made over the purchases made by civic agencies and anomalies are investigated. The errant officials are identified and action is taken regularly to ensure a fair and transparent procurement process in all civic bodies.”The meeting, held at the Sunderlal Patwa Urban Development Training Institute in Bhauri, Bhopal, was attended by Urban Administration Commissioner Sanket Bhondve, chief municipal officers from urban local bodies, and other departmental officials. Anshuman Raj, Additional Managing Director of the Madhya Pradesh State Electronics Development Corporation (MPSEDC), presented the procurement analysis.Story continues below this adReferring to purchases in Barodiya Kala, Raj said GI octagonal poles and continuous poles worth Rs 97 lakh had been purchased. “I do not know whether there are even enough places here to install that many poles. But they kept buying these poles,” he said.Raj said the department’s analysis examined how much different urban local bodies paid for the same item. “The most important thing for us is the anomaly analysis: how much does one municipality or Nagar Panchayat, any ULB, pay for the same item, and how much does another pay for it?” he said.Giving the example of phenolic disinfectant, Raj said the recorded prices differed sharply across purchases. “What do you think people have paid for it? Someone has purchased the same product for Rs 5, while someone else has purchased it for Rs 33,000.”He then explained the individual entries. “The Sardarpur ULB purchased it. They bought a total of 2,500 litres for Rs 5 each, amounting to Rs 1.35 lakh,” he said. He separately referred to an entry from the Rajgarh area showing a purchase from the vendor RG Online at Rs 33,000, later specifying the price as Rs 33,500.Story continues below this ad‘AI understands quite well what you are purchasing’Raj said the system was intended to identify products even when they were listed under different names. “It is possible that many people write the same disinfectant under different names. Some may write phenyl under another name. But the AI understands quite well what you are actually purchasing,” he said.He cited another example involving 60-watt LED lights. “Someone purchased them for Rs 306, while someone else purchased the same LED light for Rs 11,800,” he said. The purchase at Rs 11,800 was recorded in Bhopal, with a total purchase value of Rs 3.78 lakh, according to the presentation.Raj said the department estimated potential savings by comparing actual purchase prices with the distribution of prices recorded for the same items. He clarified that the calculation did not assume that every urban local body should purchase goods at the lowest available price.Based on the analysis, Raj estimated that purchasing at average prices could have saved approximately Rs 250 crore over the three years. “If we had purchased even at the average price — and I am not even saying that we should have purchased at the lowest price — we could have saved Rs 250 crore,” he said.