Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) corporators of Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) exchanged heated arguments during the BMC Council meeting on Monday.
As soon as the meeting started at Acharya Narendra Dev library, BJP corporators including Asharam Sharma, Mahesh Kaswana, Pankaj Choukse and others raised the matter of the meeting of Congress corporators with Union Minister Kamal Nath recently.
Notably, Kailash Mishra along with 42 other Congress corporators had met the union minister in Delhi and demanded that a grant of Rs 200 crores should be accepted for development of Bhopal. The minister gave his in principle approval for the demand.
The BJP corporators asked Congress corporators to disclose from where the amount of Rs 200 crore will come and how it will be spent. Irked by the questions, the Congress corporators raised the counter-question to the BJP corporators that they should explain why development work under Mukhyamantri Adhosanrachana Yojna (CM’s infrastructural scheme) is being done only in wards of the BJP corporators.
Both groups kept arguing over the matter for long and some of the corporators clashed with each other over these issues. Apart from this, during the meeting Congress Corporator Abdul Shafiq asked that how many contractors were engaged by the BMC for construction of houses under JNNURM from year 2008 to 2010. He also asked that how many work orders were issued and how much money was paid as project escalation cost.
BMC officials informed that work orders for 17 projects were issued from 2008 to 2010 and contractors were paid Rs 26 lakh as escalation cost.
This led to considerable furor in the house as the congress corporators alleged that the BMC has unduly favoured contractors. Following this, Council Chairman Kailash Mishra assured that a committee including BMC Commissioner, Revenue Officer and two members from Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology would be included in it to probe the matter.