Too many babus spoil Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation 's broth

HYDERABAD: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) appears to have become something of a rehabilitation centre. The civic body has eight sanctioned posts of additional commissioner (AC) but, as of now, there are 12 of them holding that office at the corporation. Apart from the ACs, a senior IAS officer has been serving in GHMC as a special commissioner.
The financial burden aside, GHMC is also finding it difficult to provide them work.As a result, existing wings are being further split that these officers may be assigned duties. For instance, additional commissioner P Anuradha till recently used to handle both the sports and parks subjects. But after N Chandra Mohan Reddy landed at the corporation on deputation from the forest department, the parks subject was transferred to him.
Incidentally, only 11 additional commissioners are working with the corporation; the twelfth, AC Venkatram Reddy, has been with the municipal administration minister M Maheedhar Reddy as officer on special duty (OSD) for some time past. However, the officer gets all facilities, including salary and vehicles, from GHMC. Additional commissioners, who work under the commissioner, are overall in-charge of subjects like planning, finance, health and sanitation. They supervise works and schemes and also take key decisions pertaining to these subjects, including implementation, with the approval of the commissioner.
Most additional commissioners have little to do as the subjects allotted to them are quite limited in scope. Until a couple of months back, an AC use to handle administration, legal and election subjects. However, to give some work to the ACs, three ACs have been given one subject each, while two ACs have two subjects each with another AC handling the election beat.
"There is no necessity for a separate AC for works as two top engineering officials - engineer-in-chief (projects) and chief engineer (maintenance) - are handling the subject," an official said.
Similarly, advertisement and electricity used to be handled by ACs along with other subjects. But to 'accommodate' an officer, who is the husband of an MLA, the zonal commissioner, East Zone, was brought to the head office.
As municipal AC posts are considerably remunerative, officers generally do not want to leave the corporation after having joined it. An AC, M Rajeshwara Rao, was shunted out to his parent body, the municipal administration and urban development (MA&UD) department in September by the commissioner for some reasons, but the officer got a stay order from the administrative tribunal. Just to give him work, he was given the 'legal' department.
"The state government is sending officers on deputation to the corporation without any request from the civic body. The officers who seek deputation claim that GHMC requires more officers, especially following the formation of Greater Hyderabad. However, there is no requirement of ACs as majority of the subjects had been delegated to zonal officers and circle-level officers," an official said.