The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) investigators have informed a special team in Pune that the arrested accused had planned to distribute the bribery amount among 16 officials of the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC).
Meanwhile, the court remanded all the arrested accused to police custody till Saturday.
The ACB laid a trap at the PCMC building in Pimpri on August 18 and arrested five persons including standing committee chairman Nitin Dnyaneshwar Landge. His personal assistant (PA) Dnyaneshwar Pingale, clerk Vijay Shambhulal Chawriya, peon Arvind Kamble, and computer operator Rajendra Shinde.
Landge is a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) corporator from ward number 7 in Bhosari and as chairman of the standing committee, Landge, he is empowered to make decisions about various funds and their utilisation.
Meanwhile, the opposition parties, including Shiv Sena and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) held a protest against ruling party BJP outside the PCMC office on Friday.
The Shiv Sena protest was led by Maval MP Shrirang Barne and other office leaders. The party members appealed to dismiss the BJP rule in the PCMC.
Barne met civic body chief Rajesh Patil and asked him to keep a tap on corruption activity during the tender process. Barne also demanded a detailed inquiry into the graft case and stern punishments for the culprits.
{{/usCountry}}Barne met civic body chief Rajesh Patil and asked him to keep a tap on corruption activity during the tender process. Barne also demanded a detailed inquiry into the graft case and stern punishments for the culprits.
{{/usCountry}}“There have been many issues of corruption in various tender filing processes in the BJP regime. A group of people are involved in such activity and action should be taken against them,” said Barne.
However, BJP leaders came in the support of Landge and termed the incident as a political gimmick to defame the party image ahead of the civic body polls in January next year.
Mahesh Landge, BJP president, Pimpri Chinchwad, said, “This is an attempt to defame BJP image by the opposition ahead of the elections.”
General body meeting concludes in eight minutes
The online general body meeting of August was concluded in eight minutes which was chaired by Mayor Usha Dhore. In eight minutes, 22 subjects were discussed and cleared during the meeting.
The meeting started at 2.05pm and ended at 2:13pm.
The opposition leader and party members of the standing committee requested the mayor for discussion, but she did not respond. The members were not allowed to enter the meeting hall by security guards.