Mayor promises to plug revenue loss in ad section

'Collusion between ad officers, legal cell depriving Palike huge money'

Mayor B N Manjunatha Reddy has held the BBMP legal cell responsible for leakage of revenue for the civic agency, specially in the advertisement section.

Speaking at the ‘Meet the press’ programme organised by Press Club of Bangalore on Thursday, the Mayor said, “The lawyers from BBMP legal cell who represent cases in High Court have been absent from hearings as many as 30 times. The Palike has suffered losses of crores of rupees due to the collusion between officers of the advertisement section and the legal cell. Based on the recommendations of former administrator T M Vijaya Bhaskar, the lethargic officials have been removed.”

He said that in place of them, efficient officers would be deployed and a background check would be done for their efficiency.

When questioned about the bank accounts of the Palike, Reddy said that they had more than 600 bank accounts and plans were on to streamline them. He said that he would take steps to reduce the number of accounts and make sure that every department had one account.

Reddy said that the elevated road project connecting North-South and East–West would also be executed.

“The project will be supervised by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and the detailed project report is ready. Within a few months, the project will kickstart.”

Reddy said that the financial status of the civic agency is so bad that they are unable to pay the phone bills and salaries of BBMP employees, sometimes. However, he said that this will not stop them from executing projects.

“All the emergency works will be carried out ward wise. We have requested Chief Minister Siddaramaiah to release Rs 250 crore to the Palike and the chief minister has promised to do so.”

The Mayor said that due to traffic in the morning, the Palike was unable to carry out road works. Hence, road improvement works would be undertaken at night. He said that special teams had been formed to look into the pothole issue. Regarding the encroachment of stormwater drains, he said that the encroachments were more in the newly added areas to BBMP. He said that survey and markings to identify and assess the extent of encroachment had been completed.