Bhopal Notes :: 57 :: Need for audit of Bhopal Municipal Corporation

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Bhopal Municipal Corporation officials are very innovative in various ways. They can think out of the box and plan projects that do not normally fall within the necessary parameters of deployment of public finances for building useful physical assets. For instance, they devised a project to create an auditorium on the Upper Lake for laser shows on a water screen for which equipment for pumping water vertically up in the air have also been purchased. The idea was to impart lessons to the local people on the history of Bhopal. For this purpose, they transgressed many of the environmental norms for conservation of wetlands and created a platform of concrete right on the waters of the Lake. They seemed to have forgotten that there was a norm, one might even say a law, that no permanent structure could be erected within 50 metres of the Full Tank Level (FTL).

Strangely, on the other hand, during the mapping of the Shapura Lake which is also situated in the city and which is a virtual soak pit, objections were being raised for constructions that fell within the 33 metres from its Full Tank Level (FTL). Such are the contradictions with which the officers of the municipal corporation function and waste public resources. They had erected a laser show auditorium a few years back on the Lower Lake. It was also put in operation. As it gave an overdose of laser shows every day the crowds thinned out and it was eventually shut down. Some of the municipal officials had said at that time that the shows flopped because the location of the auditorium was wrong. According to them, it should have been the Upper Lake. Perhaps the same set of officials has contrived to manage setting up of

this projected show. Commissioner of the municipality told the Bhopal Citizens’ Forum (BCF), the auditorium on the Lower Lake had since been handed over to some government department. The civic body is already starved of funds and the moneys spent on the auditorium just disappeared without any benefit to the citizens. Imagine how many good roads could have been built in that kind of money!  

The work in connection with current project was done surreptitiously but nothing can be hidden from public gaze or that of the media for long. There was adverse reporting in the newspapers that the municipality was breaching the environmental rules. But all this was to no effect; the Corporation went ahead with the project in a bull-headed manner. Even when the erstwhile Commissioner came to explain the matter to the members of the BCF her minions gave a different twist with a presentation that tried to brand Bhopal as a Vedic City. All the members were surprised as this was the first time they were hearing of Bhopal being a Vedic City. It was being implied that the city had been in existence since Vedic times. The Vedic period, as perhaps is well known, stretches from 1500 BC to 500 BC and to brand Bhopal as a city as old as that was nothing but a sheer unconscionably high flight of imagination. This kind of rubbish was supposed to be projected by laser beams on the Upper Lake. One wonders about the intelligence of the bright bureaucrat who gave approval to such a project which is likely to sound the death knell of the already-struggling-to-survive Lake. Curiously, even the Commissioner, a highly educated IAS officer of around eight years seniority, was supportive of the project and said that this was a good way of educating people about the history of their city. She did not think for a moment that it would be imparting false history to children of the city besides being a threat to the Lake.

The project has been controversial ever since it came out in the public domain. Even a couple of days ago the Mayor was asked about the proposal but he said he did not have the details and asked for them. Till now he has called for the details twice but the same have not been shown to him. Obviously, there is something fishy about it. The reports said construction division of the Corporation had not dealt with any such proposal. If this division does not know about it and even the Mayor is unaware of it the question that arises is who gave the go-ahead to the proposal. Was it the former Commissioner who has just been transferred or some self-serving officials of the municipality processed it keeping key officials in the dark

Another vernacular newspaper reported recently that the preparations for the laser shows are in final stages and they are intending to throw it open in October next. Unfortunately, action to put it on hold has not fructified yet. One wonders whether the project would be commissioned by-passing the Mayor.

Though it is the custodian of the Lake the Municipal Corporation has been doing all the wrong things in so far as its conservation is concerned. It has been spending scarce financial resources only on beautification and peripheral matters paying no attention to

improvement in the quality of its waters. A new view-point has been created on the VIP Road and, on questioning, was passed off as an eco-park, a patent untruth. The Corporation has never had any concept of conservation of this very vital Lake and the commissioners, who headed it, though of the premier administrative service, have also been clueless on the subject.

 This is very strange especially when there is so much talk today in the country on conservation of wetlands in view of the prevailing water stress. More so, when the experts of an institution as important as the Centre of Environmental Planning and Technology of Ahmedabad have declared that the Lake would remain useful only for another twenty years if measures to conserve it were not taken immediately. The institution was asked by the MP government to submit a report about the measures that needed to be taken for its conservation. The state government is sitting on the report and seems to be blind to the goings-on in the municipal corporation of its capital.

From what is evident in regard to the Lake it appears people of Bhopal are going to lose it as a source of drinking water. The water body may remain but it would be good enough only for taking selfies from its banks. If sewer lines flowing into it are not diverted to sewage treatment plants its water would contaminate even the neighbouring groundwater resources. The situation has somehow been brought down to a precarious level.

Having regard to all the circumstances, the functioning of the Municipal Corporation needs to be investigated and its expenditures in recent past subjected to audit by Comptroller and Auditor General failing which by the Accountant General of the state. A great many cases of corruption and wastage of public money in the municipality have so far been exposed by the vernacular press. Even the former municipal commissioner, Ms. Chhavi Bharadwaj, recently said that controlling corruption in the civic body was a matter of great challenge. The corrupt are so well entrenched.

*Photo from internet

5th September 2017