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No meet for 4 months: Bathinda mayor dodging general house meeting hampers development works
Development works of more than ₹20 crore are stalled as the Bathinda mayor is allegedly desisting from calling a general house meeting for the last more than four months.
Development works of more than ₹20 crore are stalled as the Bathinda mayor is allegedly desisting from calling a general house meeting for the last more than four months.
Sources in the Bathinda municipal corporation said on Friday that as time for annual budget is arriving, unprecedented delay in convening meeting, the local body is in a jeopardy to meet financial needs for public works.
Delay is attributed to a political imbalance in the house as the mayor Raman Goyal is seeing an open rebellion against her by the fellow Congress councillors.
Raman Goyal, a political novice was elected as the Congress candidate to become the first woman mayor of Bathinda, the largest local body in the south Malwa belt.
She is considered close to the former finance minister Manpreet Badal, who joined the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP). After her camp started giving feelers on the social media to stay loyal to Manpreet, leadership of the Congress, who has 40 party councillors in the 50-member house.
Mayor remained unavailable for comments throughout the day on Friday.
Municipal commissioner Rahul said on Friday that the last general house meeting was held on September 28 and now files of various works to the tune of ₹ 20-22 crore are piling up.
“Any work involving a budget of more than ₹2 lakh needs an approval of the mayor. Only the mayor is entitled to call the house meeting for approving works and it should be called every month. As a general house meeting has not been convened in the last more than four months, works related to cleaning sewage lines, repair of roads etc have been held up,” he said.
Local body officials can pursue a work without approval by the mayor in exceptional cases.
“Bathinda is in a grip of dog bite menace and needs sterlisation drive of street dogs. We have decided to start the drive as a public health emergency anticipating the approval would be granted later by the authority,” added the commissioner.
“My office has been sending reminders every week to mayor to convene the general house meeting to clear projects. But I have yet to receive any response. Higher authorities have been apprised of the current situation,” he added.
Senior vice mayor and senior Congress leader Ashok Kumar said the party leadership has a consensus to remove the mayor.
“Mayor has set a bad precedent by not convening house meetings. She has lost the faith in the Congress councillors and this is the reason she is running away from the house proceedings. We have made mind to replace her and a non-confidence motion would be moved this month after consultation with the state party president Amrinder Singh Raja Warring,” said Kumar.
