Outgoing PCMC panel clears projects worth Rs 120 crore in its last meeting

Initial plan was to discuss projects worth Rs 8 crore; BJP alleges scandal, writes to state govt for probe.

PCMC, PCMC project, PCMC 120 crore project, pune news, BJP

Atul Shitole

The outgoing PCMC standing committee’s decision to approve projects worth Rs 120 crore on its last day in office has come under fire from the opposition BJP, which has decided to approach the state government urging it to probe the way the ruling NCP and its partner Congress are brazenly disregarding norms.

On Saturday, the Atul Shitole-led standing committee approved multiple projects in what was the last meeting of the one-year tenure of the committee. The process to elect the new standing committee has already begun.

Intially, the agenda was to sanction projects worth only Rs 8 crore. However, the committee burnt the midnight oil as it went full hog to approve projects collectively worth Rs 120 crore. The proposals for the additional projects were put forward by the members.

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The Pimpri-Chinchwad BJP unit has taken serious objection to the way the standing committee went about its task. “When there were only projects worth Rs 8 crore on the agenda, we want to know why the standing committee sanctioned project worth Rs 120 crore,” said BJP leader Sarang Kamtekar.

Alleging that it was done for earning commissions, Kamtekar said, “Everyone knows how the PCMC standing committee functions. This time, it has gone too far. Without proper discussions, without anybody’s knowledge, it has blatantly passed proposals brought in at the last minute. All this is clearly done with an eye on commissions from the contractors.”

The BJP alleged that even the Shiv Sena joined hands with the NCP-Congress combine in passing the proposals. It has now written to the state government to probe the functioning of the PCMC standing committee, especially in matters such as passing proposals without proper discussions, Kamtekar said.

However, municipal secretary Ulhas Jagtap said that there was nothing improper in accepting proposals at the last minute and approving them. “This generally happens in standing committee meetings. The agenda is decided well in advance. Some matters come up after the agenda is finalised. Such matters are duly placed before the standing committee though they are not on the agenda,” he said.
Jagtap, however, agreed that the amount of projects sanctioned in the meeting was way too high. When contacted, PCMC Municipal Commissioner Rajeev Jadhav said that if there is anything wrong in the way the projects were sanctioned, he has the right to scrap them. “I will look into,” he said.

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Shitole too justified it, saying that the committee has done everything within the framework of law. “Before this, standing committees have sanctioned projects worth over Rs 1,200 crore. That time nobody raised objections. Here, we have a Rs 49-crore hospital which was approved among other things. This is much required for the people of Pimpri-Chinchwad,” he said.

Kamtekar said that it is also shocking how the standing committee approved escalated costs for several old works. “How can they approve escalations without properly investigating and studying…there is a lot of hanky panky. The civic chief should launch an investigation…we want to know what was the urgency that they approved projects worth over Rs 100 crore…?”

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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