Mumbai: Hours before the tenure of the Shiv Sena-led BMC ended on Monday, it passed more than 300 proposals worth Rs 2,500 crore within 25 minutes on the last day of the standing committee meeting.
The proposals included construction and repairs of hospitals, water tunnels, sewage lines, repair and construction of small internal roads, construction of a wall around Deonar dumping ground, beautification of grounds and gardens, sources said.
The meeting was obviously not without political drama. BJP corporators strongly objected to the procedure and raised a point of order before the meeting commenced. But standing committee chairman Yashwant Jadhav told them to raise the point of order later. BJP members then started raising slogans against Jadhav and hurled meeting agenda papers in the auditorium. To counter the protest, Shiv Sena members also started raising slogans against the BJP. BJP corporator Makarand Narvekar made a video of the incident, which the Shiv Sena members objected to.
Prabhakar Shinde, BJP group leader in the BMC, Said, “As per the procedure, we should have got these proposals three days ago but they were given at the eleventh hour.” He said the quantum of proposals was so huge that it was not practically possible to pass them in such a short span of time. “If we consider one-minute discussion on each proposal, we need at least 370 minutes to complete the meeting.”
BJP corporators also staged protests in front of the office of BMC chief Iqbal Singh Chahal and gave letters to the administration, requesting them to cancel the proposals.
However, Jadhav defended the passing of proposals. He said, “The standing committee is a constitutional body and the chairman has the right to decide when the point of order should be allowed. Today, we had business to deal with and many public interest proposals were needed to be passed in the meeting.”
