The consulting company was asked by the SMC in 1994, when it was under the administrator's rule, to prepare a master project to take care of the drainage requirements of the fast-growing city. The company, which charged Rs 42 lakhs for the project, submitted its final report as late as 1998 though it had been given only a year to do so.

Based on the report, the civic body had begun construction of pumping stations in right earnest and spent over Rs 70 lakhs before city engineer K M Parekh came up with the startling finding that the consulting company did not take into account the natural gradient along a creek, to which the drainage pipeline was to run parallel before emptying into the sea. He concluded that there was no need for so many pumping stations as effluents would run through the pipe on their own.

The corporation later claimed that doing away with pumping stations would save it not less than Rs 137 crore. The amount was huge enough to forget a paltry sum of Rs 70 lakh spent on one of the pumping stations. The consulting company was rapped on the knuckles by the civic body, which asked it to peruse the shortcomings shown by Parekh and his team in its original plan.

Even this took the company nearly one year, a period that saw it facing queries from the civic officials every now and then as Parekh's finding came as a challenge and cast a shadow on its reputation. The ensuing correspondence ensured that by the time the company agreed that SMC was right, one year had elapsed.

A couple of days ago the standing committee called its officials and the company representative before it. Parekh gave a two-hour presentation, following which the standing committee postponed its meeting. The plan will be formally accepted in the next meeting, a civic source said. An official claimed that the civic body had paid only Rs 25 lakh to the company and may not pay the remainder. It was surprising for the civic body to ask for a final report from a company which did not ``apply its mind and forgot something as simple as gravitational pull''.

Parekh said the company had accepted its mistake and since it had some experience in the field and was aware of Surat's geography, SMC stuck to it instead of finding a new company.

A standing committee member, however, said things were not as simple as that. He told Express Newsline that the terms and conditions were such that they did not leave the company with any other option than to submit the report. An international company could not have committed such a blunder, he said. He claimed that the company's fees had already been paid. Moreover, the company was not slapped any penalty. If the report was so faulty, whatever was paid to it should have been recovered.