Outgoing Municipal Commissioner Dr Abhijeet Chaudhari said, urban governance is quite a challenging task and at Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC), the absence of a proper administrative set-up initially was a major obstacle in implementation of the development works. Signing off from NMC on a high note, Dr Chaudhari, in an informal interaction with newspersons on Thursday, outlined the agenda for his successor, tidy up civic finances first and foremost. Secondly, there is tremendous scope for improving the delivery of services to citizens and added that, with an elected body now in place, the Municipal Commissioner would now have a wider view on his desk that would help him in better understanding of civic issues.

 

The internal accruals need to be increased as there exists tremendous scope to raise the same and highlighted a decision to deploy AI tools to reassess property tax base with NMC officials estimating a windfall of atleast Rs 100 crore. As of now, it remains the fact that NMC benefited due to heavyweight leadership, that of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari. Together, their standing in public life is much more than my service period, Dr Chaudhari said with a broad smile, saying the backing of two leaderships enabled him to achieve several significant milestones. Due to these two leaders, NMC never faced funds crunch. Still, it would be better to increase internal accruals, with focus needed on increasing property tax rate, increasing revenue from Sky Signs advertisements and also, from Town Planning.

 

On administrative front, the outgoing Municipal Commissioner was happy that he was able to wipe out backlog of Awaijdars and also thanked State Government for accepting the proposal to extend benefit of Laad-Pagey Committee to them. Further, granting of promotion to NMC officers post approval of RR by State Government, pending since years, was another significant achievement. This helped in streamlining the administration, but to a question, admitted lack of talent pool hurts. Hopefully, the new entrants to NMC service having sound technical skills would soon step into shoes of their seniors, many of them are in last leg of their service period. The Commissioner also listed the investment of nearly Rs 50 crore done in education department through internal funds by NMC, it helped to strengthen the infrastructure wherein new schools are being constructed. Also, the number of Akansha schools has doubled to 12, as the civic body is serious about stemming the dropouts from civic-run schools. Similarly, the completion of works under Amrut provided the satisfaction. About Naag Nadi, he said, the project is on line but underlined that time is critical factor as to its implementation, as it’s going to take a long time given the work profile.

 

The mapping of Pohra river abatement project is also going to start soon. Also, the SusBde project and second garbage processing plant are nearing completion and that would prevent any further dumping at Bhandewadi yard. Questioned about inadequate work profile of several officers while few were overburdened, the outgoing Municipal Commissioner was straight to the point. The primary focus was to get the work done and when someone does not have that will or lacks the drive as the head, he could not sit back and relax. He, however, said the inability to complete the recruitment of new firemen was the sore point of his more than two years of tenure. Despite continuously chasing the matter, UDD could not provide clear-cut guidelines that prevented filling up of vacancies in Fire Brigade, though the requirement machinery, including the 75-metre-high platform, was acquired by NMC. Asked about the love-hate relationship with the elected public representatives, Dr Chaudhari said, he had healthy working partnership with all. About the controversy over solid waste management, he was of the view that, any termination would come at a price, as sudden disruption would leave NMC rudderless. Further, the terms of engagement of two agencies was decided by the House then.