By Express News Service

MUMBAI: In a startling revelation in the state assembly, the Maharashtra government on Monday virtually agreed that it is still searching the whereabouts of the firm that was awarded the contract to kill rats in the state secretariat about two years back.

“That was a prohibitory measure to save the electrical and internet cablings being destroyed by the rodents. This was not the first time. It is being done since 1984. The contract was awarded to supply 3,19,400 poisonous pills to kill rodents,” Public Works Department (PWD) Minister Chandrakant Patil told the state legislature through a statement on Monday.

“PWD awards 33 percent of its total works to co-operative institutes of labourers. Accordingly, this work of killing rodents too was awarded to one Ms Vinayak Majoor Cooperative Society Ltd. They even completed the work in the stipulated time period. The number 3,19,400 is not of the killed rats but of the pills provided by the firm and the payment was made through a cheque into an account at the Mumbai Cooperative Bank,” Patil said in his statement.

He also said that the Cooperatives department has been asked to trace the whereabouts of the said firm.

Meanwhile, it has come forth that the address given by the firm in the documents is bogus. There is no firm on the given address. The firm is registered in the name of one Amol Shedge. But, it is being said that Amol Shedge had died a few years back. But, the firm is still being run in his name.

Shedge had registered the firm in 2002 upon advice from one of his relatives Waman Deokar. But, the firm was dissolved in 2004. Shedge’s relatives have said that they were shocked to know that the firm founded by Amol was still operating even after his death. The government is now trying to trace the real culprits behind the scam.

Disgruntled BJP leader Eknath Khadse, while smelling a rat in the whole case, had said in the state assembly last Thursday that the firm had killed 3,19,400 rats in Mantralaya within a span of just seven days while it was awarded the contract to do so in a span of six months.