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House meeting: Chandigarh mayor takes jibe at MC chief, draws flak from Oppn
Mayor Anup Gupta questioned municipal commissioner Anindita Mitra about lack of accountability and transparency in MC’s administrative functioning, only to be counter-attacked by councillors of the opposition Aam Aadmi Party and Congress over his decisions
mandeep.kour@hindustantimes.com
The Chandigarh municipal corporation’s General House meeting on Tuesday saw mayor Anup Gupta taking a jibe at municipal commissioner Anindita Mitra over lack of accountability and transparency in MC’s administrative functioning, only to be counter-attacked by councillors of the opposition Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Congress over his decisions.
Wasting no time, Gupta started the proceedings of the House by questioning Mitra about the cancellation of a tender for mechanised sweeping at Manimajra. He continued to seek a status report on the multi-crore parking scam, before questioning reinstatement of employees involved in graft cases and issuance of financial orders without consulting him.
“A geographic information system (GIS)-based mechanised and manual sweeping in Manimajra and 13 villages project was approved by the House in November last year, but there has been no progress. Please give a status report on the number of tenders called and firms rejected, and the grounds for rejection,” Gupta asked Mitra, who quickly responded that two tenders had been floated till now and the firm that qualified in second tender was rejected last week on technical grounds.
The mayor then questioned transparency in MC’s functioning: “Every councillor and officer of MC is accountable to the public. Also, officers are accountable to councillors, but they never knew that huge amount of money was due to MC by private firms handling parking lots until the news of the scam broke out. An inquiry was marked in February this year to fix responsibility of MC officials as to how the public money got diverted. Why has the inquiry report not been submitted to the mayor and House till now?” Mitra responded that a retired judge was still conducting the inquiry and no report had been submitted till now.
“Also, how can the commissioner reinstate two employees who were arrested by CBI in a graft case, even when a departmental inquiry is still being conducted against them? Not only this, no discussion is being held with me or the House over the financial orders of MC, including that of reserving funds due to NGT orders or GST dues that MC owes to central government,” the mayor remarked.
‘Limit personal talks to office’
While making regular attempts to interrupt the mayor by questioning “his accountability”, the councillors asked him to “hold personal talks with the commissioner” in their offices.
“Why are you asking these questions suddenly when you were mum in your tenure for the last 11 months? You also decided on your own to make parking free for two-wheelers from December 1 and announced that without consulting the House. You are just keeping focus on Lok Sabha elections,” quipped AAP councillor Prem Lata while targeting the mayor.
“You can seek these details from Mitra personally in your office. Why do you want talks on transparency and accountability now when you are left with just one-month tenure?” questioned AAP councillor Kuldeep Dhalor.
Congress councillor Taruna Mehta also targeted the mayor over absence of BJP councillors in the all-party councillors’ protest against UT administration’s Electric Vehicle policy in October.
BJP councillors remain mum
While the mayor was targeting the commissioner, amid backlash from the opposition, the BJP councillors showed no support to him.
The arguments had continued for an hour before BJP councillors Harpreet Kaur Babla, Saurabh Joshi and Maheshinder Singh Sidhu asked the opposition to let the mayor speak.
Locked in conflict
While the mayor and commissioner have remained at loggerheads for long, the mayor came out openly against the commissioner in August this year, when she banned new tenders for developmental projects due to paucity of funds after ringfencing ₹282 crore for waste management on NGT’s orders.
The mayor, who believed the situation could have been handled without those orders, had then sought a ₹25-crore grant from the UT administration.
The mayor had also demanded an inquiry against senior officers of the medical officer of health (MOH) wing after its two officers were arrested by CBI in a graft case. But the commissioner had opposed the inquiry, saying it would be akin to “wanting an inquiry against me”.
More recently, on November 19, the mayor had formed an “ex-mayor forum” of 20 former mayors from various parties and hosted their lunch, but the commissioner had refused to pay the bills. A request was made by the mayor, but the commissioner had refused the grant, citing that the event was not part of MC’s affairs and public money should not be spent on it.
