A damning report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has exposed severe lapses and wasteful expenditure in key flood management projects in Bengaluru. The audit reveals that despite crores of rupees being spent, the city's residents continue to suffer from floods year after year due to the absence of a functional forecast and alert mechanism.
Flood Model Project Mired in Mismanagement
The CAG report, tabled in the Karnataka legislature on Wednesday, December 17, 2025, scrutinized projects implemented by the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNDMC). One such project was the development of an urban flood model for Bengaluru, funded by the central Department of Science and Technology with a total outlay of Rs 2.3 crore.
The work involved installing 25 telemetric weather stations and four ultrasonic water level sensors within the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) limits at a cost of Rs 16.69 lakh. However, by December 2023, audit officials found that Rs 1.61 crore had already been spent, with a staggering 90% of this expenditure going towards salaries.
"Audit observed that KSNDMC, despite being the implementing and monitoring agency, did not possess either the details of the location of installation of equipment or the data obtained through the equipment since installation," the report stated. It concluded that while huge sums were spent on salaries, the actual preparation of the flood forecast alert model was absent, and called for an investigation into the reasons for this lapse.
Non-Functional and Stolen Sensors Render System Useless
In a separate but related project, the KSNDMC in March 2021 undertook the task of "Strengthening the flood early warning system of BBMP through installing water level sensors (WLS)" with an outlay of Rs 22.36 crore from state disaster response fund (SDRF) grants.
This project aimed to install 105 water level sensors—100 on stormwater drains and five on flood-vulnerable streets—at a cost of Rs 1.03 crore. A work order was issued in July 2021, and the firm completed installation by January 2022, receiving a payment of Rs 20.98 crore (which included annual maintenance charges for five years).
An audit verification in December 2023 revealed a shocking state of affairs: 49 out of the 100 sensors installed on stormwater drains were non-functional. Furthermore, no information or data was available for the five sensors supposedly installed on vulnerable streets. This failure completely undermined the objective of creating a robust early warning system.
In a surprising revelation, the KSNDMC stated that in the absence of proper security, some sensors were removed by the BBMP itself, while a few were stolen. The CAG highlighted this as a clear case of negligence in project execution and equipment maintenance.
Continued Suffering for Karnataka Residents
The CAG report pulled no punches in outlining the consequences of these failures. It pointed to the KSNDMC authorities' negligence in the "execution of projects, maintenance of equipment installed, and non-obtaining envisaged data from this equipment."
"The objective of better disaster management and disaster risk reduction stood affected on this account. Resultantly, the population of the State continued to suffer year after year without a comprehensive forecast alert mechanism against flooding," the report added emphatically.
The audit has recommended a probe into the reasons behind these critical lapses. The findings underscore a systemic failure in implementing vital infrastructure projects designed to protect India's tech capital from its annual monsoon woes, raising serious questions about accountability and the use of public funds meant for disaster mitigation.
