Dispelling rumours, Virendra Singh to resume charge today

Anjaya Anparthi / TNN / Oct 22, 2018, 10:55 IST

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Dispelling rumours, Virendra Singh to resume charge today

Picture for representational purpose only.

NAGPUR: Putting rumours of his transfer to rest, municipal commissioner Virendra Singh arrived in the city on Sunday after a 47-day long leave and will resume charge at the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) on Monday.
Rumours of Singh’s transfer had been doing the rounds in NMC as a result of his long leave and tussle with the ruling party leaders.Singh had gone on leave from September 4 for personal reasons. Additional municipal commissioner Ravindra Thakre was holding municipal commissioner’s charge in Singh’s absence.
After joining the NMC on May 4, Singh had taken measures to use funds of the cash-strapped civic body judiciously. It had reportedly irked the ruling party leaders who started opposing Singh openly.
Singh had implemented building plan management system, a state government’s software for online approval of building plans. In the NMC general body meeting held on Saturday, the ruling party leaders got a resolution passed to keep BPMS on hold for six months. All eyes will now be on Singh whether he will implement the decision or send the resolution to the state government.

It will also be interesting to see what stand Singh, known as a strict administrator, takes on the ongoing agitation of NMC contractors. Despite efforts of ruling party leaders and officials, the contractors have not called off their strike and sit-in agitation at the NMC. They have stopped all civil works over their demand for release of long pending payments.
During the period when Singh was on leave, Thakre had set aside some of the decisions taken by the former. One of them was related to discontinuing a

committee constituted by Singh to approve and monitor works after approval from the standing committee. Restrictions on non-emergency works like concretization of internal roads, laying of inter-locking tiles, construction of welcome gates etc were also removed.
Replacing Dr Pradip Dasarwar, Thakre had appointed controversial medical officer Dr Sunil Kamble as health officer (sanitation).
Ruling party leader Sandip Joshi said Singh’s return is a welcome development for the NMC.

About the Author

Anjaya Anparthi

Anjaya Rajam Anparthi, 33, is a principal correspondent with The Times of India, Nagpur edition and looking after civic beat. He also likes to write stories from power and mining beats. He is a fond lover of city’s environment and highlight stories related to trees, greenery, rivers, lakes, sewage system, water treatment plants, and pollution-level. The issues related to civic amenities takes him to various parts of the city, slum areas, posh localities and meet citizens, social activists, NGOs, corporators and political leaders. Daylong visit to the NMC’s administrative offices makes him easy in learning various planning and developments of the city. He too likes to visit the developmental projects being undertaken under JNNURM Scheme once in a week. Maintaining a good contact with 145 corporators and officials, he like to highlight various issues related to the city spread in over 217 sq.km.

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