Saturday, Apr 27, 2024 | Last Update : 08:36 AM IST
BMC to accept offline requests
Civic body does u-turn on permission to Ganpati pandals.
Mumbai: Bowing to pressure from the Ganesh mandals in the city, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Friday decided to accept offline applications from them seeking permission for the festival. However, the civic body has clarified that applications forms would be provided online only.
Additional municipal commissioner Vijay Singhal has directed all ward officers to accept hard copies of all required documents from Ganesh mandals and feed them into the online system. This way, offline applications will be converted into online, but the final permission will be given online only, said civic officials.
Mr Singhal has asked civic officials to spread the message to Ganesh mandals in their areas. The civic body has also promised to train Ganesh mandal officials on the online system. Ward-level officials have been asked to assist mandals in filling up the form by asking them to get the required documents to the concerned BMC ward.
In an effort to improve the application-approval rate, the civic body has introduced the online system in all the 24 wards. From this year onwards, the BMC had also made it compulsory for all mandals to get approvals from the police, traffic and the fire department.
But the online system has been mired in controversy with reports of Ganesh mandals facing several difficulties in filling the application form online. Problems like, requisite forms not getting uploaded, the online system crashing midway, etc were proving to be hurdles for several mandals to get permission in time.
The mandals had also claimed that the online system was slow, due to which there was a delay in getting permissions. The Ganesh mandal coordination committee in the city had asked the civic body to provide offline assistance as well for permissions. But BMC officials had earlier refused to do away with the online system.
But now mandal officials have expressed their satisfaction at the BMC’s decision to accept documents offline. “It was much required as we were facing several problems and the BMC had not made much effort to explain to mandals on how the application form was to be filled,” said Narendra Dahibavkar, president of the Brihanmumbai Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav Samanvay Samiti.
