Civic engineer gets 2 years in jail for graft

S Ahmed Ali TNN 

Mumbai: Civic executive engineer (T ward) Rajendra Phadnis, who was caught by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) accepting a bribe of Rs 20,000 in 2009, was sentenced to two years in prison. 
    Sessions court special judge V A Daulatabad imposed a fine of Rs 5,000, failing which the judge said he may be sent to jail for two more months. 
    In April 2009, the complainant, an interior designer, was carrying out work in three flats. The designer was amalgamating the flats which was objected to by Phadnis. 
    Phadnis initially sent two private persons and stopped work; when the complainant questioned them, he was told that he should contact the former. Phadnis then demanded Rs 15,000 per flat. The interior designer paid Rs 20,000, but Phadnis’ demands kept increasing, after which the former lodged an official complaint with the ACB. The ACB caught Phadnis in his office, when he accepted the bribe.

INTERNAL NOTE CONTROVERSY

BMC to revamp civil works system

Shawan Sen TNN 

Mumbai:A day after an internal note on the ward-level civil works circulated by BMC’s chief accountant was leaked to a standing committee member, TOI has learnt that the civic body is looking for ways to plug the leaks in petty civil works in wards. 
    Existing civil works contractors at the ward level have been under the lens of the civic administration as they are pushing for an extension of their tender period, which expires on March 31. 
    A senior civic official said, “We need to overhaul the petty civil work at the ward level. Firstly, we need to utilize the resources that we have at the ward level rather than depend on contractors. Only those works which cannot be handled by us should be outsourced.” 
    TOI has learnt that the existing set of contractors involved in petty civil works want to extend their tender period so that new contractors are not appointed. The work period for the existing contractors expires on March 31. “This letter has been leaked in order to create a controversy,” said a senior leader from the ruling saffron alliance. Congress corporator Sheetal Mhatre, who raised a point of objection about the letter in a standing committee meeting, 
said she would soon disclose who gave her the letter. “I am planning to file an RTI to obtain data on fund allocated by the chief accountant (finance) in the last five years,” she said. 
    Rahul Shewale, chairman of the standing committee, said, “I had received the note last week. We are planning to overhaul the system since we are not getting any results. We need to break the nexus and ensure that work is done at the ward level.”