Opposition leaders protest commissioner’s VC attendance in BMC meeting

Walkout of meet, terming it as a snub to avoid people’s works and queries

@hepzia

Mumbai: The opposition leaders of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Monday walked out of the group leaders meeting after municipal commissioner Iqbal Chahal refused to join the meeting in person and chose to attend it only via video conferencing citing social distancing.

In a joint statement, the leaders of the Congress- Ravi Raja, Nationalist Congress Party- Rakhi Jadhav and the Samajwadi Party- Raees Shaikh jointly stated their displeasure against the municipal commissioner for preferring to attend meeting via VC despite being present in the same BMC headquarters building. The opposition leaders viewed it as a slight since unlike a general body meeting that is attended by the 227 corporators, the group leaders meeting is attended only by party leaders and mayor and constitutes less than ten members. The meeting was scheduled after a long duration of the Covid lockdown.

The leaders saw it as an excuse to avoid facing questions from them. “The BMC refuses to respond to letters of corporators and group leaders and doesn’t resolve civic issues raised by them. The meetings of the various statutory bodies too are not being conducted. Various works are suffering due to funds not being sanctioned by the administration,” the joint statement said.

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Earlier, too the BMC had scheduled a corporation meeting, in which all corporators are meant to attend, but that was cancelled at the last meeting. The only statutory body meeting that has been successfully conducted by video conferencing was of the tree committee on August 3, that saw proposals to cut trees being sanctioned in it. Citing this, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party Prabhakar Shinde said that this showed that the BMC chief was doing the bidding only on behalf of the wealthy and the builders and was not interested in solving problems of the people. Shinde alleged that many malpractices were taking place in the BMC under the guise of pandemic and the BMC chief was avoiding the elected representatives to escape answering to their queries. He wondered how the BMC could introduce a big decision like a 20% water cut in the city without taking the elected representatives in confidence.

Earlier too, Ravi Raja, the leader of the opposition had raised similar grouse against the general manager of the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) for ignoring the voices of the elected representatives.

Corporators across the board have been accusing the administrative officials of BMC of simply bypassing them and forcing decisions on them especially during the Covid-19 pandemic.