Karnataka - Gulbarga   

Seven GCC officials suspended

GULBARGA: Two assistant executive engineers and five assistant engineers of the Gulbarga City Corporation have been suspended for not submitting accounts for Rs. 2.64 crore drawn by them for different works during 2005-06 and 2006-07.

Commissioner of the corporation K.G. Jagadeesh in an order passed on Wednesday night suspended assistant executive engineers Mallikarjun Allipur and Mohammed Haji and assistant engineers Gopal Krishna, K.M. Joshi, Ravi Patil, Arif Hussain and M.A. Majeed with immediate effect.

Sources in the corporation said here on Thursday that the financial irregularities the officials were allegedly responsible for came to the notice of the corporation during the internal audit for the year 2005-06 and 2006-07.

The sources said that the Commissioner, who took serious note of the irregularities, served show-cause notices seeking an explanation from the officials. However, none of the officials replied to the show-cause notice forcing the Commissioner to suspend them.

This is the first time that so many senior corporation officials have been suspended. The functioning of the corporation and the alleged lackadaisical approach by the senior officials towards performing their duties had come in for severe criticism from Urban Development Minister Suresh Kumar who, during his visit to Gulbarga in September, suspended an assistant executive engineer and a health officer on the spot for their failure to maintain cleanliness in the city.

The Minister, who also issued a show-cause notice to the then Commissioner S.P. Mudhol for his failures later suspended him as well.

Regional Commissioner Rajneesh Goel, who conducted a detailed review of the working of the city corporation a couple of weeks ago, had also criticised the functioning of the corporation and stressed the need for cracking the whip on errant officials.

Now the corporation is practically without any senior engineer. The Commissioner has decided to take the help of engineers of the Public Works Department to perform emergency works.

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