BMC to appoint vigilance committee to monitor city beautification – Hindustan Times

Mumbai: After receiving much flak from 94 former corporators last week vis-à-vis the BMC’s beautification works in the city, municipal commissioner Iqbal Chahal has ordered assistant commissioners to form a vigilance committee in all 24 administrative wards to closely monitor the works.

HT had reported on December 14 that the ex-corporators, including former mayor Kishori Pednekar, had written to chief minister Eknath Shinde about fiscal mismanagement and the lack of accountability and transparency in the BMC ever since the term of the city’s 227 corporators ended in March this year.

The vigilance committee will be formed starting Monday and will comprise officers at the level of engineers or from the central department. They will report to the deputy municipal commissioner under the guidance of the assistant commissioners of the ward. A weekly ward-wise review will be taken on the beautification works to ensure that contractors do their jobs as per specifications.

Rajesh Akare, assistant commissioner, P (South) ward said the vigilance committees would primarily comprise engineers from various departments. “We will take cognisance of complaints from citizens by immediately inspecting the site and addressing the complaint,” he said. “We will also ensure during the execution of the work that its quality is perfect. In terms of quantity, we will ensure that the contractors are doing the full work that they are being paid for.”

Harshad Kale, deputy municipal commissioner, Zone V, who is in charge of M (West), M (East) and L wards, said the BMC wanted to ensure that work was done with appropriate workmanship and quality. “This is being done to obviate any later debate that work was not properly supervised or inferior materials were used,” he said. “On Monday, we will form vigilance panels for wards comprising engineers from the ward. But ideally the vigilance should be from some independent body rather than the ward. We will finalise this on Monday.”

The former corporators who wrote to CM Shinde, meanwhile, felt that before forming vigilance teams, the beautification of Mumbai ought to be properly planned instead of a hasty, haphazard job to meet the March 2023 deadline.

MLA Rais Shaikh, former corporator and Samajwadi Party leader, who was one of the signatories, told HT, “Vigilance is one thing but before that comes planned beautification and synergy. There needs to be a uniform beautification plan for the whole of Mumbai. There cannot be one plan for Dadar, one for Madanpura and yet another for Chembur. Especially the street furniture, where one bench looks like it is from Iran and the other from Ukraine.”

Shaikh complained that an unplanned and hasty beautification of the city was being done, which was the crux of the corporators’ complaint. “After the G-20 summit, all the flowers the BMC planted in Worli have wilted,” he said. “Native varieties should have been planted to avoid this. Ideally, we should have a competition among international designers to come up with a well-thought-out plan with uniformity in the overall design without rushing to meet the deadline of March 2023. More than vigilance, we need synergy in the plan and beautification works that will last longer. Let us not deface the city by resorting to shortcuts.”

Under the beautification project costing ₹1,700crore, around 500 works have begun across the city. These include traffic island beautification, painting murals on walls, lighting of beaches and gardens and beautification of forts. In addition to this, 10,000 toilets will be constructed in slum areas. The state government aims to complete the project by March 2023.