Citing misinformation, BMC chief restricts all civic officials, barring a few, from speaking to media

The circular issued by Chahal on December 19 stated: “It is necessary to give out information…but it has been observed that without the consent of municipal commissioner, often heads of departments/accounts provide information regarding the BMC to the media, which also includes several policy matters. Therefore, the image of civic body gets affected in the mind of public due to dissemination of contradictory information. Therefore, henceforth only the municipal commissioner as well as the AMCs will be the official competent Authority to provide any information related to operations of BMC.”

At present, the commissioner is the administrative head of the civic body. Under him are four AMCs — all IAS officers — who are in charge of several departments and affairs of the BMC. Besides them, there are six JMCs and 16 DMCs who report to the concerned AMCs. Each of the 24 municipal wards is manned by an AC. The ACs and DMCs are recruited through the Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC).

While addressing a delegation of media persons at the BMC headquarters, Chahal said on Tuesday: “Since the last six months many wrong information were circulated in media. On several occasions, we have even received complaints from journalists about misinformation being spread about other officers. Therefore, I had decided that only myself and AMCs will speak with the media.”

With Chahal’s directives in place, several heads of departments, including the chief engineers and executive engineers in charge of various civic departments like roads, bridges, solid waste management etc, will not remain accessible to the media anymore.

Former elected representatives criticised the civic chief’s decision of placing restrictions on the officials. “It is really unfortunate that there has been a restriction on information flow especially at a time when everything is available in the public domain. The press acts as a bridge between common citizens and the administration. Therefore, it is important for them to have access to adequate information,” said former Congress corporator Asif Zakaria.

Ravi Raja, former Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the BMC, said that the latest diktat from the commissioner is an undemocratic decision.

“The implementation of this latest circular shows that the administration is unwilling to give out information about what’s actually going on inside the BMC. This is clearly undemocratic since the HODs of all the various departments are the primary sources of information about whatever is happening on the ground in reality,” Raja said.

Rais Shaikh, Samajwadi Party (SP) MLA and former corporator, said, “The decision has been taken to keep certain parameters of the BMC away from the public eye. However, it will not affect us in anyway as we will continue to expose the miscreants.”