BJP corporators fail to convince Mundhe to lift stay on new works
   Date :19-Feb-2020

BJP corporators fail to c
 
 
Staff Reporter :
 
AVAIN attempt was made by cor￾porators of ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday to corner Municipal Commissioner Tukaram Mundhe and lift the ban imposed on new development works in Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC). The move by BJP to take on heavy weight Municipal Commissioner how￾ever failed to work as Mundhe maintained his stand, he said as the finances of civic body are poor it makes no sense to lift the stay imposed on new works. BJP is making a public cause of being unable to carry out devel￾opment works and fulfil aspira￾tions of citizens by trying to cor￾ner new Municipal Commissioner. The nearly half an hour meeting at New Administrative Building of NMC in Civil Lines saw some heated moments as corporators tried to dominate the moment as per their pre-decided strategy. However Municipal Commissioner remained unim￾pressed and sticked to his stand that he made during the special general body meeting of NMC House.
 
Mundhe told the BJP del￾egation that only those projects whose work orders were not issued are withheld and there is no ban on new works, only they would need to be prioritised. Senior corporator Dayashankar Tiwari recalled when LBT was forced on NMC, the then Municipal Commissioner had said that NMC would not face any financial crunch. Now, Commissioner is giving excuse of financial crunch but why should devel￾opment works be stalled as ulti￾mately citizens are the loosers.
 
Commissioner reasoned that there is no blanket stoppage but at the same time NMC has compulsory liability of nearly Rs 400 crores and that cannot be missed.The dues are mount￾ing and how long can civic body delay the payment. Also Mundhe said nearly Rs 150 to Rs 200 crores of Income Tax and Group Provident Fund needs to be transferred and if receipts are not in that order, works must be prioritised. Mundhe said the current sit￾uation has arisen due to dif￾ference in perception, as civic budget is popular and can risk populism, but Commissioner budget reflect on actual accruals. The differ￾ence between two budgets results in gap one which caus￾es the problem.
 
So currently Commissioner impressed upon BJP delegation to bear with sit￾uation as he is yet to take com￾plete grasp of financial situa￾tion of NMC and said admin￾istration as well as corporators are duty bound to development of city. Office bearers of various com￾mittees Balya Borkar, Virendra Kukreja, former Mayor Nanda Jichkar, Mahendra Dhanvijay, Pragati Patil, former Dy Mayor Deepraj Pardikar, senior cor￾proator Sunil Agrawal and oth￾ers were part of the 111 corpo￾rators strong delegation.