Chandigarh may be hot and dry with no monsoon in sight, but it’s always stormy when the Municipal Corporation House meets. Tuesday’s meeting saw thunder and lightning from start to finish and the Opposition rained criticism as usual.
BJP councilors accused the Congress-ruled Municipal Corporation of poor planning and failure to monitor preparations to meet the annual monsoon deluge. Nearly all the BJP councilors were on their feet time and again during Tuesday’s meeting of the general house of the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation. Mayor Raj Bala Malik had a tough time imposing order.
Against this barrage of criticism the Municipal Commissioner could only repeat that work is going on. He insisted that the PWD crews were working on a war footing to clean and repair the city’s water and sewage pipelines. However, the Opposition was not satisfied and continued to chant their Monsoon taunt of “Just Two More Weeks”. Rajinder Rattu, BJP councilor representing Ward 24, was particularly angry about the state of the pipelines in her area.
She lambasted the Water Department officers who inspected the water supplied by the MC pipelines and declared it to be clean and safe to drink and said that one had only to draw a glass of water from the tap in order to see the suspended dirt particles and foul smell of the water. Congress councilors alleged that the Opposition was only interested in paralyzing the House.
The present water shortage and frequent black-outs also provided ample ammunition to the Opposition. Former mayor Harjinder Kaur complained that her constituents were suffering from shortage of both water and power.
Saurabh Joshi, BJP councilor, harped on the same bijli-pani issue.
Referring to a question he had placed before the MC House in April. This pertained to wages paid to the MC’s contractual tube well operators. Singh said that the operators told him that they are paid Rs 2,000 to 21 hundred per month whereas, the contractors claim to be paying them as per minimum wage which should be more than double what the men are getting. Singh secretly recorded his conversation with the operators and played it in the House.
Although the House agenda had placed discussion of the stray dog problem at the top of the list, councilors showed no interest in it and there was no discussion. Maybe the next House meeting will manage to take it up.
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