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Under SC fire over Estate Office’s working, Chandigarh admn suspends five officials
Four senior assistants, one assistant of Chandigarh Estate Office were suspended on Wednesday over failure to discharge their official responsibilities and causing financial loss to the administration
The UT administration on Wednesday suspended five officials posted at the Estate Office over failure to discharge their official responsibilities and causing financial loss.
Four of the employees are senior assistants — Shiv Kumar, Amarjot Singh, Saroj Khillan and Shashi Nagar, while the fifth employee, Sunil Payal, is a junior assistant.
The decision was taken after a department review meeting chaired by finance-cum-estate secretary Vijay Namdeorao Zade.
The secretary reviewed the functioning of the Estate Office branches in detail, especially with regard to the recovery of pending dues of leasehold and rented properties, possession of resumed properties, vacant plots and disposal of long-pending applications.
Finding the five employees falling short, the secretary ordered their immediate suspension. “These officials had miserably failed to respond regarding their lack of action regarding these issues,” stated the order issued by the estate officer.
A UT official said, “Sufficient advance notice was given to these employees, but they didn’t respond regarding their lack of action.”
During the suspension period, they will be paid subsistence allowance as per the relevant rules and their headquarters has been fixed at the office of the Assistant Estate Officer-1.
Estate officer (EO) Vinay Pratap Singh, assistant estate officers (AEOs) Harjeet Singh Sandhu and Sorabh Kumar Arora, SDM (East) Nitish Singla, SDM (South) Pradhuman Singh and SDM (Central) Sanyam Garg were also present at the meeting.
Office working under scanner
UT’s decision to suspend the five officials comes in the backdrop of the ongoing Supreme Court hearings in the Estate Office versus Charanjit Kaur case, which pertains to the department’s working. The next date of hearing in the case is on August 29.
Castigating the working of the UT administration, the SC, in its September 2021 order, had stated, “The officers are unable to take decisions which are citizen friendly. Even no attempt is made to remove the bottlenecks in the working of the Estate Office.”
“The difficulty in the administration is that the senior officers are on deputation from the states of either Punjab or Haryana. The officers revert to their parent cadre after completion of deputation period of approximately three years. However, the officials continue to work at the Estate Office,” the court had observed.
“Though the administration has done commendable work to maintain the character of Chandigarh as City Beautiful, but the Estate Office has an underbelly, that is, the action of the officials cannot be said to be bona fide, as is apparent in the present case. It is a typical case of ‘you show me face, I will show the rule’,” the court had remarked, while pulling up the officials for arbitrary and discriminatory actions.
The apex court had even constituted a 11-member committee to improve the working of the Estate Office and ease property-related woes of Chandigarh residents.
In a bid to further improve the office’s working and clear the backlog of cases, the UT administration on July 1 had appointed two AEOs instead of one as was earlier the practice.
Harjeet Singh Sandhu, a Punjab Civil Services (PCS) officer, who was AEO for several months, was designated as AEO-1. Another PCS officer, Sorabh Kumar Arora, was designated as AEO-2.
