Corporators seek action against civic babu’s ‘high-handedness’

Mumbai: Devendra Kumar Jain, assistant municipal commissioner of K-East ward, has found himself in a controversy for his alleged high-handed attitude towards corporators and ‘haphazard’ demolition works in his area.

Corporators have demanded action against him for showing disrespect towards public representatives and not following municipal rules during demolition. The issue was raised in the civic general body meeting on Monday as all party corporators made a scathing attack on Mr Jain, alleging that the ward officer had undertaken demolition of several structures in the area without serving notices to the parties concerned.

Shiv Sena party leader Yashwant Jadhav made a statement asking civic chief Ajoy Mehta to reply on the issue. “The municipal commissioner should clear his stand as such incidents would lead to increase in autocratic nature of civic officials,” he said.

Sunil Yadav, BJP corporator from Andheri, said, “The ward officer has no interest in doing public work and does not even meet corporators. He is also instigating the civic employees against us. When we adjourned the civic ward committee meeting a few days, the staff did sloganeering against us. The ward officer also came wearing black band as a symbol to protest against us.”

Addressing to coporators grievances, Mr Mehta said it was wrong for civic officials to protest in this way.