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Journalism of Courage
MUMBAI, December 6: Bharatiya Janata Party and Shiv Sena MLAs of Mumbai will meet Chief Minister Manohar Joshi on Tuesday to discuss and decide upon city-specific projects and programmes. The meeting is expected to have bureaucrats from finance, law and judiciary and a few other departments so that decisions are not stalled. The meeting aims to address the stigma of “government’s non-performance”.
The purpose behind the unconventional meeting, said sources, is to energise departments – and indirectly the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation – to initiate and speed up various developmental projects in the Sena-BJP held constituencies in the city. Of the 34 constituencies, the alliance partners hold 29 with the Sena having 17 and BJP 12 MLAs respectively.
Though MLAs meet the Chief Minister now and then, this meeting assumes significance against the backdrop of the non-performancce of the alliance government. Several MLAs have apparently received complaints from their electorate citing examples of howprojects that were promised years ago are not yet on stream or those that were started are languishing for want of resources and the all-important nudge from powers-that-be.
The MLAs demanded that senior bureaucrats be present at the meeting since their contention is that work or any project or programme suffers from bureaucratic non-cooperation and delays. This, however, is not true, say bureaucrats, amused at the idea of a special meeting. Most projects are of a minor nature and MLAs want to explore the use of their fund, where the government and/or the bureaucracy has cited lack of resources as a reason.“Many things don’t happen because of administrative reasons, but finally we, as the people’s representatives will get it in the neck,” said a BJP MLA.
