The BJP and the Congress came together in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation on Wednesday leaving s the ruling Shiv Sena was left battling alone.
Both these parties along with the Samajwadi Party rejected a proposal to get 2,438 teak chairs and 1,116 teak tables for civic school teachers at a cost of ₹2.24 crores. While the Sena corporators said teak was “sturdy and long-lasting”, the opposition said it was “environmentally unfriendly” and suggested alternatives like “steel, aluminium or plastic furnitures”. When the proposal was put up for voting, the Sena was defeated by just 6 votes.
BJP and Congress corporators also demanded that the Municipal Commissioner and chief auditor submit their audit remarks before the standing committee failing which they would not clear this year’s civic budget.
Unanswered queries
Leader of the BJP Manoj Kotak said, “How can the audit process be considered complete and over, if audit queries on various civic works are kept pending and unanswered. Unless the backlog of 22 years of audit process is cleared, there is no point in clearing the current budget.”
Ravi Raja, group leader of the Congress, said, “The audit department comes under the standing committee and its chief should have ensured that proper procedures were being followed.”
The issue came up at the standing committee on Wednesday when a status report on pending audit reports since 1993-94 was submitted. The BJP, which has been upping the ante against the Shiv Sena sprang up to demand that audit remarks be submitted soon.
Though normally the BMC has its own officials for internal auditing, two years back the Devendra Fadnavis government sent a state government official on deputation to the BMC for auditing.
Samajwadi Party leader in BMC, Raees Sheikh noted that the fact that audit remarks were not made public for so many years clearly showed that the BMC was not interested on coming clean on issues.
“The BMC chief who has been brought in by the BJP is clearly not being transparent enough,” commented Sheikh.
