KOLHAPUR: The civic body has decided to call a meeting of all authorities concerned with Kalammawadi Direct Pipeline Project in the first week of May.The decision to call the meeting has been taken by Kolhapur Municipal Corporation (KMC) commissioner Abhijeet Chaudhary after corporators from all political parties alleged a scam of Rs 488 crore into the project.The corporators claimed that the KMC cleared bills of Rs 2.5 crore for the work of iron made cross-bridge which costs not more than Rs 25 lakh. A total of nine such cross-bridges have been built along the 52-km route of the project.Chaudhary said, "We want the work to complete soon. The work will be executed in a transparent way for which all the issues concerned will be discussed with engineers, consultant and other officials next week."The civic authorities have already refuted allegations stating that the inflated bills were cleared mistakenly and it was rectified immediately. The corporators claimed that officials inflated the estimates of some of the works in the tender document itself in order to benefit the contractor and consultant.The meeting next week will discuss such works included in the project with wrong estimates. The corporators have demanded sacking of the consultant for poor monitoring of the work."The civic bodies cannot do all the things on its own. We will ensure that consultant properly monitors the project. The project needs to be completed as early as possible. The contractor has asked for extending the deadline. We are going to appoint a special officer from our side to look after the progress of the project," Chaudhary said.Meanwhile, Shiv Sena has threatened to stop the work of the project and has demanded impartial investigation into the alleged scams. Chaudhary has appealed to the organisations to not to stop the work giving assurance about transparency in rest of the work.

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