Phantom Asphalt & Paperwork Magic: How GIDC’s Corlim Road Scam Was Pulled Off
Goans don’t need a degree in civil engineering to recognize a bad road. Every monsoon, our industrial estates and village panchayat roads turn into a treacherous obstacle course of craters and sudden water-logging. But what happens when roads aren’t just poorly built—they are completely conjured out of thin air using paper adjustments, retroactive math, and receipts from a sugar factory that wasn't even running? A blockbuster public-interest complaint filed by the United Goans Foundation (UGF) has blown the lid off a calculated civil works scandal at the Corlim Industrial Estate, exposing how public funds are routinely siphoned off through administrative sleight-of-hand.
INVESTIGATIONS
8/20/20263 min read
💰 The Scale of the Scam: How the Bills Bloated
The project, officially titled "Maintenance and Repairs of Main and Internal Roads – Phase I at Corlim Industrial Estate," started off looking like a standard infrastructural update on paper:
Estimated Cost: Rs. 58,93,175.50
Tendered/Awarded Value: Rs. 47,14,540/- (won by M/s Prakash R. Naik Construction at roughly 20% below estimate)
The Initial Bill (As Executed): Approximately Rs. 18,29,880/- for actual square meters of top-layer asphalt carpeting laid during a Sunday shift in May 2023.
The Final Payout Jump: Unaccountably ballooned to approximately Rs. 26,83,158/-—a sudden, unearned spike of about Rs. 8.53 lakh without any additional ground work or explanation.
What was supposed to be a regular road repair job at the Corlim industrial area turned into a fake paperwork scam to steal money. Instead of building the roads properly as promised in the contract, officials and the contractor skipped important layers of the road, changed the records later on, and used fake weight slips to show materials that were never actually used
👥 Who’s Involved? The Bureaucratic Roster
he UGF complaint doesn't beat around the bush; it names the high-ranking public officials and executors alleged to be part of this systemic loop:
Shri P. Abhishek Polumatla (IAS) – Managing Director, GIDC
Shri Nitin Nevrekar – General Manager (Engineering), GIDC
Shri Subhash Belgaonkar – General Manager (Civil Engg, on deputation from PWD)
Shri Vijaykumar Mardolkar – Technical Advisor / Ex-Chief Engineer (PWD), GIDC
Shri Jitendra Gawandalkar – Field Manager, GIDC
Shri Philemon Milagres Pereira – Chief Accounts Officer, GIDC
M/s Prakash R. Naik Construction – The executing contractor
🔄 Anatomy of the Scam: How They Pulled It Off
According to the documents the scam was executed through a systematic sequence of paperwork manipulation:
Step 1: The Contract and Sub-Standard Execution M/s Prakash R. Naik Construction secured the tender for “Maintenance and Repairs of Main and Internal Roads – Phase I at Corlim Industrial Estate” at a discounted bid of roughly Rs. 47.14 lakh. When the work was executed (notably on a Sunday, May 14, 2023), investigators allege that critical core foundation layers (such as heavy sub-base and binder layers) mandated by the contract were skipped, leaving only a thin top layer.
Step 2: The Initial Honest Accounting Initially, field engineering records accurately captured what was actually laid on the ground. A first running account bill amounting to roughly Rs. 18.29 lakh was generated, reflecting the scaled-down reality of the work.
Step 3: The Retroactive Paperwork Rewrite Months after the work was supposedly finished and certified, the original measurement entries were allegedly crossed out or cancelled by engineering and technical officials (including GMs Nevrekar and Belgaonkar, and Technical Advisor Mardolkar). They substituted the item descriptions from square meters of a standard carpet to cubic meters of heavy "Bituminous Concrete" to artificially inflate the project's recorded volume.
Step 4: Financial Inflation and "Ghost" Receipts Backed by accounts oversight (led by Chief Accounts Officer Philemon Milagres Pereira), the final payout was ballooned to roughly Rs. 26.83 lakh—siphoning an unearned surplus of about Rs. 8.53 lakh. To justify these fabricated volumes on paper, fake weighbridge receipts from Sanjeevani Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana (Dharbandora) were attached. An RTI query later exposed that the factory’s weighbridge was completely non-operational during that exact period.
Step 5: Administrative Complicity & Blind Sign-offs Top executive leadership (headed by MD P. Abhishek Polumatla) allegedly permitted the processing and advancement of these manipulated files despite internal red flags raised by retired engineers like Girish Priolkar, prompting UGF to demand immediate FIRs under the BNS and Prevention of Corruption Act.
🏛️ The UGF Steps In: Demanding a Crackdown
Dragging this administrative rot into the open, UGF executive member Shriram Raiturkar lodged a formal complaint on August 19, 2026, directly with top state authorities—including Chief Minister Dr. Pramod Sawant, Chief Secretary Dr. V. Candavelou, the Directorate of Vigilance, and the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB).
The foundation is demanding swift action:
An immediate Vigilance Enquiry and FIR under the BNS and Prevention of Corruption Act.
The forensic seizure of all original Measurement Books (MBs) before records can be altered or destroyed.
A comprehensive technical audit of all GIDC road works across Goa to check if Corlim was just a single trick or part of a massive state-wide siphoning racket.
As Goans foot the bill for roads that wash away while files are altered behind closed doors in Panaji, all eyes are on Altinho to see if the government will act—or sweep yet another scandal under the freshly paved asphalt.
Corlim IDC 2022