MUMBAI, SEPT 29: After having enjoyed executive powers for a year when the Mayor-in-Council was in place, corporators are now finding it uneasy to play second fiddle to bureaucrats in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). Realisation has dawned that the administration is proving the `very epitome of red-tapism,' with all powers concentrated in the hands of babus and very little to do for corporators except for approving proposals prepared by the administration. The more this realisation sets in, the more there is awareness of the powerlessness of elected representatives.That is why, seizing the slightest opportunity to raise a hue and cry, irate corporators levelled corruption charges against the civic staff following the refusal of an additional municipal commissioner to show an octroi-related file to the standing committee chairperson. A verbal duel between the corporators and the administration ensued, with both groups making baseless accusations against each other. Finally, it was again thetruncated powers of the corporators that forced them to raise the issue of ``the convention of providing files.'' After all, the bureaucrats were only going by the book. Mayor Hareshwar Patil convened a meeting, pacified the two groups and remarked that the new bureaucrats were unaware of the conventions followed in BMC.He had a word of warning too. He said if bureaucrats functioned in isolation without taking corporators into confidence, it would not take too long for the MiC to be reintroduced. He clarified that five months after the MiC's scrapping, corporators were feeling that work was moving at a snail's pace. A corporator echoed his viewpoint: ``Files moved faster in the MiC. The job of implementation was with the administration, so MiC members should not have been blamed for the system's failure.''The mayor added the MiC's scrapping did not mean the civic staff could continue to do the BMC's work by keeping corporators in the dark. ``Bureaucrats and corporators are supposed to work together andassist each other in running the corporation,'' he remarked. Patil, who had come out strongly against the MiC when the state government was deliberating on whether to scrap it, said the system in itself was good but was handled badly. It gave executive powers to both the corporators and civic staff, which ensured a balance in managing BMC's affairs.Voicing his complaint, Samajwadi Party leader Yusuf Abrahani said: ``We opposed the MiC and forced the state to scrap it. But this does not mean bureaucrats can behave as per their whims,'' he added. He threatened the administration that if corporators were not taken into confidence, they would stall the BMC's functioning. Last week, he also warned the administration during the standing committee meeting that corporators would not sign proposals sent by civic staff. Every proposal prepared by the administration has to be signed by two corporators before it is placed before any committee for approval.Things which did not make much of a difference before theintroduction of MiC are also now made to look like big hurdles. Congress leader A K Bastiwala said the administration does not provide files related to issues that are taken up during meetings. This has been the case for the last two years, but corporators seem to have discovered it only recently. They say this convention was followed in the past but fail to answer why they did not ask for the files in the last two years.The administration, on its part, has been cool about the whole row. The AMC against whom the corporators complained did not attend the standing committee meeting that took place in the wake of the controversy, and K Nalinakshan assured corporators that they could come to him if his staff did not provide files.
