Tags:
Journalism of Courage
CHANDIGARH, Nov 30: The issue of change in design of the bridge being constructed on the caved-in causeway between Chandigarh and Mohali, near YPS school, today reverberated in the meeting of the Municipal Corporation, as the 29-member House decided to have a detailed enquiry into the issue. The debate on the issue took most of the time, with almost every councillor taking part in it, and finally settling for a probe by a five-member committee of the Corporation, which will submit its report on the issue within one month.
The committee, having Air Marshall R.S. Bedi retd as its convener, and XEN Roads as its member secretary, has three other councillor R.K. Aggarwal, Om Parkash Goyal and Raj Kumar Goyal as its other members. The terms of reference of the committee would, however, be settled within the next two days, the time provided for the councillors to send their suggestions on the same. The work on the bridge would, however, not stop.
The debate was earlier triggered off by former senior deputy mayor Prem Sagar Jain, who sought to know as to why the design of the bridge had been changed, for which he also called for an enquiry.
This followed reiteration of objections by R.K. Aggarwal, after which many members including O.P. Goyal, Raj Kumar Goyal, Harish Bhanot, Saudamini Bambah, R.S. Bedi, Ranjana Shahi and Mohinder Singh demanded a probe.
Though the Commissioner S.K. Gathwal claimed that the requisite permission were taken, officials reiterated that the House had passed the budget for the bridge and not the design.
Meanwhile, the issue of sanctioning two posts in the accounts department to independently handle the disbursement of loans and advances to MC employees also evoked lively discussion and the House finally sanctioned one post on the condition that from now on the norms for work allocation be followed properly. Earlier, only two questions could be taken up in the question hour, when the councillors could only discuss only about the mobile toilets privatisation of nurseries.
