The Chhattisgarh State Marketing Corporation discovered a reliable way to pay overtime: submit paperwork, collect commissions, skip the part where any work gets done.
Between 2019-20 and 2023-24, the Chhattisgarh State Marketing Corporation Ltd (CSMCL) disbursed ₹115 crore in overtime payments to private manpower agencies. The workers listed on the bills never received the money — because the work never happened. Private agencies submitted fabricated overtime claims with no attendance records or documentation, then paid commissions back to CSMCL officials. Among the seven arrested: Anwar Dhebar, elder brother of Raipur's former mayor Aijaz Dhebar, along with executives from multiple manpower firms. The scheme ran across the full five-year tenure of the previous Congress government — a duration suggesting it was less a spontaneous fraud than a standing arrangement. The workers in question were presumably also working overtime somewhere, just not in any of the paperwork.