Civic panel chief in line of fire for assault

KOLHAPUR: Municipal commissioner Vijayalakshami Bidari on Tuesday slapped a show cause notice on civic body standing committee chairman Ramesh Powar, seeking his response to why he had allegedly manhandled executive engineer Bharat Shinde on November 20. Powar has been asked to reply to the notice within seven days. “You have been accused of manhandling the executive engineer, who has also complained about phone calls threatening him to resign from his post. We want you to reply to the allegations within seven days or will have to face action according to the Article 13 (1) of the Bombay Provincial Municipal Corporations Act 1949,” states the notice, a copy of which is with the TOI.According to the act, the municipal commissioner can recommended the State Election Commission to disqualify the membership of the elected corporator.Ahead of the Kolhapur Municipal Corporation’s (KMC) general body meeting on November 20, Shinde was allegedly called outside the venue and beaten up by Powar. Following this, Shinde, who had been appointed the programme coordinator for the implementation of the state government-sponsored Nagarotthan scheme, complained to the municipal commissioner that he was manhandled. The executive engineer had then requested the commissioner to accept his resignation. Reacting to the show cause notice, Powar on Tuesday said, “I reiterated that I had only asked Shinde about the reasons leading to the delay in road construction work as part of the Nagarotthan work. And this was not the first time that I had raised the issue. Even in the past I had enquired about the progress about the project. I am firm on my stand and will clear my stand in writing on the issue within a couple of days.” He alleged that Shinde was not carrying out his duty properly and, as a result, the corporators were facing the people’s wrath because of the delay in the road construction work. “Work on only 19 km of a 49-km stretch of road has been done even as the deadline ended in May. We had repeatedly complained to the higher authorities of the civic administration about the delay. But they remained silent. It was only after the residents started asking us about why the road condition was not improved that we had to we tabled a proposal, seeking Shinde’s termination from the scheme because of its poor implementation.” In the meantime, the civic administration has appointed M M Nirmale, the sub-divisional engineer of Tararani Market Ward Office, the acting programme coordinator for the implementation of the Nagarotthan scheme. Niramle told TOI, “We have issued a tender for the construction of 30 km of roads. The earlier contractors have been blacklisted and will not be allowed to apply for the new tenders.”In the recent past, the corporators and the KMC administration have been at loggerheads and they had gone to the extent of boycotting the standing committee meeting in protest against the civic body’s alleged failure to release area development funds.Powar had then said the corporators seven months ago pledged the residents of their respective constituencies to carry out development work with the funds allotted by the administration in this year’s budget. He, however, accused the civic administration of not releasing the development funds. The KMC had cited financial constraint as the reason for the delay in releasing the funds. There are 77 corporators in the KMC and the total amount of area development funds needed is Rs 35 crore. Besides the KMC, the state government had, through the district planning committee, promised to give Rs 5 lakh to the corporators for local area development.