CAG inquiry in offing, parties demand removal of Chahal from municipal commissioner, BMC administrator post

“The CAG is set to carry out inquiry in several BMC departments and officials against whom the allegations were made are still manning the same administrative posts. They should be transferred to some other department as long as the inquiry is on so that it doesn’t affect the fairness of the probe. If these officials continue to stay in their posts, there could be chances of them manipulating the probe as well,” Shaikh told The Indian Express on Tuesday.

“Now that a CAG probe will be carried out, the person whose spending is being questioned shouldn’t be allowed to stay as the commissioner and administrator. The official should be transferred from his post now since he has finished more than two years in BMC as commissioner and the tenure of administrator has also expired,” Shaikh added.

Meanwhile, a number of former corporators across party lines stated that the civic body chief had all the powers to take financial calls during the Covid-induced lockdown.

Ravi Raja, former Congress corporator and Leader of Opposition (LoP) in BMC, welcomed the decision of inquiry and said that a unanimous resolution was passed in 2020 in which all the powers related to taking financial calls was passed on to the administrative officers.

“The Standing Committee was dissolved from March and October 2020, and all the financial decisions were taken by the municipal commissioner. After October, the committee met through video conference and all the expenses that had occurred were brought for post-facto clearance. This means that by the time the proposals were tabled before the committee, the expenses were already made by civic administration,” said Raja.

“We had made multiple demands for withdrawing the special powers bestowed on the commissioner after the committee started to meet virtually, but the commissioner didn’t do so,” Raja added.

Prabhakar Shinde, former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) corporator and group leader in the BMC, said that the civic body had made multiple purchases during the pandemic and showed the expenses at an inflated cost.

“Emergency medicines like Remdesivir, oxygen cylinders and other logistical necessities like hospital beds, body bags, fans were shown to be purchased at an inflated cost. For example, the BMC showed that they have purchased Remdesivir at Rs 1,200 while at the same time, Haffkin institute had bought it at Rs 850. This clearly shows the mismanagement of funds and a proper CAG inquiry needs to be carried out…,” said Shinde.