The kickback served the corporator-contractor nexus well and they, in turn, involved select TMC officials to keep it going. Ironically, the whistle-blower was Anand Dighe, Sena leader in Thane, who first complained about the kickback system to Chief Minister Manohar Joshi. He appeared before the Nandlal Committee too but did not produce proof. "Nobody does this kind of corruption openly... proof is not available," he said after his deposition.

However, the Committee was able to ascertain the kickback system. Individual contractors and office-bearers of the TMC Contractors Sanghatana deposed before the Committee and gave information. On anaverage, corporators had to be given five to eight per cent before the contractor could start work; five per cent was earmarked for members of the standing committee when the contract was signed; subsequently they, along with the mayor, former mayor, leader of the house, leader of the opposition and senior corporators were given four per cent of the project outlay.

The accounts department, billing clerks and peons too had a share: 1.5 per cent each. Even the vigilance department carried a price tag of one per cent, Dighe alleged. The contractors affirmed that the fixed percentages had to be paid both to get work and have their bills/dues cleared. The delay in clearing bills/dues was anywhere from four to 20 days, sometimes months.

Senior TMC officers, the report states, ignored complaints of the delays which made the department officials casual about the process. More delay meant opportunities for the percentages.

The report throws light on another strategy -- key TMC officers and the TMC StandingCommittee took wide liberties with law in making the minutes of meetings. The Standing Committee chairman delayed in approving the minutes and getting them passed. Investigations showed that minutes of 1995 meetings had not been approved for two years. Instead, the august body had evolved a new practice based entirely on assumption, not law.

The mayor and Standing Committee chairman approved work/contracts before scheduled meetings clearly assuming that the project would be passed in the meeting. If it wasn't, it would be introduced strategically in later meetings. This explains the illegality in preparing minutes of meetings.

Both the mayor and Standing Committee chairman have "violated the authority of the Municipal Corporation and the Standing Committee," observes the report and lambasts the "incorrect" approach of officials and corporators to preparing minutes of meetings.

Most important is the affirmation of kickbacks; bending law and delaying bills was after all the route to kickbacks. "Theallegations of kickbacks definitely contain truth," writes the Nandlal Committee. It puts five people in the dock on these three grounds -- the then chairman of the Standing Committee Sudhakar Chavan and the former and present city engineers. Also the then municipal secretary Praful Raje and his predecessor P M Nibargi were held responsible for contravening law on making minutes of the Standing Committee meetings.

The TMC paid for these lapses, so to speak. It lost nearly Rs 2.52 crore when officials in connivance with corporators parked money in the Chetna Cooperative Bank in Bandra, Mumbai, without requisite approvals. Section 85 of the Bombay Provincial Municipal Corporation Act, 1949, requires that investments made outside the jurisdiction of the Corporation require prior sanction of the Standing Committee. But rules were violated, authority to invest was given to officials who do not have it, and Rs 50 lakh were invested without any sanction at all. The Bank went into liquidation and TMC could recoverless than one per cent of its investment.

The Committee also revealed several instances of rank misappropriation of funds. For instance, the education department scam revolved around an official -- Shraddha Gavaskar -- who siphoned off nearly Rs 10 lakh from the Provident Fund of department employees in 1995-96. Working with a well-greased network of officials, clerks and peons, she made applications in the names of several employees who were dead, retired or transferred. It held corporator Jitendra Awhad responsible since he, as education committee chairman, did not initiate inquiry despite an official tipping him off.

Clearly, key officials and corporators had made the TMC their personal fiefdom.