AMC to suspend 6 "errant" officials

The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation has decided to suspend six people including three town development officers H.R. Shah, Deepak Patel and N.V. Vashisht and sub-inspectors Mahendra Mehta, Pankaj Shah and Shailendra Desai.

Announcing that these are six serious cases in which the AMC thought that immediate action was needed, municipal commissioner K. Kailashnathan said, "We have decided to give 33 new cases to the Anti-Corruption Bureau to handle. While refusing to give any other information regarding those cases, Mr Kailashnathan said it included the names of deputy directors Nandkishore Parikh, Ashwin Shah, Amit Engineer and P.N. Raouth."

Another major change by the AMC is that the deputy DDO, the estate department and TDO. Department will be directly under the deputy commissioner of the zone. Till date, they had independent charge in giving sanctions to buildings up to four stories.

Mr Kailashnathan said, "This means that we will have a responsible officer over-seeing these departments." The filing system in the AMC for building documents is also being rehauled.

The deputy commissioners are also made responsible for security arrangements around damaged buildings and security will not be deployed without their permission. Moreover, the rules
have been changed to the effect that the permission to deploy the security will be given only for a week. However, the public needs to be more vigilant, said Mr Kailashnathan.

Appreciating the effort of the people of Maninagar who apprehended a builder, who was selling apartments without getting building-use permission. He said, "I appeal to all the people to be aware and help the administration. They should bring to our notice any builder who tries to sell buildings without obtaining permission. We will file a police complaint against the builder."

The municipal commissioner also announced that the AMC is not likely to pass any new plans till the government passes new laws for the building code.

Answering questions about the delay in taking action against the errant officers, he said, "Our first priority was rescue and rehabilitation. Moreover, we will wait for the police reports before taking action."
He added, "We are aware that there might be a nexus between our staff and builders. Many people in our TDO staff work consultants and are facing corruption charges. We will take action against these people."
A disaster management cell will be set up in the city under the aegis of Asian Disaster Preparedness centre in Thailand and USAID with an aid of Rs 3.5 crores. There are 15 buildings about which the decision of whether to demolish them or not is not taken.

They are Urmi Apartments in Sabarmati, Devapatha flat in Nava Vadaj, Shivalay II and Parikrama in Usmanpura, Purvi apartments, Shruti apartments and Sangemermar flats in Ambavadi, Akshardeep in Sharda Mandi, Hritvik apt in Navrangpura, Chinaibaug-B and Tirthbhumi-Aand B in Law Garden, Apollo-C and D in Sharda Mandir, Rajvi appartment in Usmanpura and Pooja appartment in Maninagar.

Mr Kailashnathan said the decision will be taken after the instruction from the court is received. In AMC area, 74 buildings were destroyed completely and fall under G-5 category, 474 buildings are badly damaged and fall under G-4 category, 632 buildings are slightly damaged and fall under G-3 category while 1,190 buildings fall under G-2 category.

Republished from Asian Age