JOIN US'Top officers took questionable decisions on hoardings'
K Mathai, the BBMP Assistant Commissioner (advertisement) who exposed the Rs 2,000-crore advertisement scam in the civic body, has raised doubts over some “questionable” decisions taken by top bureaucrats to “help” the advertisement mafia.
In his eighth report on the advertising scam, Mathai has accused former chief secretary Kaushik Mukherjee, former BBMP commissioner M Lakshminarayana, former BBMP additional commissioner N V Prasad and current BBMP Special Commissioner Rashmi V Mahesh of taking certain decisions that “helped” the mafia to have a free rein.
Mathai gave the report to BBMP Commissioner Kumar Naik G and handed over a copy to Bengaluru Development Minister K J George on Monday. Deccan Herald has reviewed the copy.
In his first report, the officer had pointed that the BBMP lost Rs 2,000 crore of revenue in billboards and other advertisements across the City in the last eight years. He said Mukherjee “openly threatened” him in front of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah when the latter appreciated his good work. “Whistleblowers should go,” Mukherjee told him in a “threatening tone”, the officer noted in the report.
Prasad “attempted” to regularise oversized hoardings by secretly preparing a note, Mathai said.
For legal opinion
“It was also cleared by then commissioner Lakshminarayana,” he said. As an afterthought, the file was later sent for legal opinion. The legal cell turned down the proposal saying it cannot regularise the oversized hoardings as against the BBMP Advertisement Bylaw, 2006. The bylaw says that billboards measuring above 20x40 feet are illegal.
Mathai also accused Lakshminarayana of giving orders on pole kiosks to a private company besides permitting AVS Advertisers, a family firm of former MLA Vatal Nagaraj, to use BBMP hoardings. “Even after the court orders on removal of these hoardings, the commissioner asked not to do so,” Mathai noted in the report. “But efforts were made to portray me as a culprit and shunt me out of the BBMP. The decisions were taken by Lakshminarayana who even admitted (as much).”
Mathai also accused Rashmi of sitting on a file on oversized hoardings even months after he gave his opinion. “If oversized hoardings are permitted, it will be totally illegal and may result in endless litigations,” Mathai had noted on the file.
He also suggested that senior officers instructed the junior staff to stop tax collection, though they fully knew that the online system had collapsed. “Instead, the BBMP, on the directions of senior officers, is returning the demand drafts of advertisers who paid crores of rupees as tax,” he noted.
‘Officer refused RTE info’
Mathai also accused Rashmi of not giving information on the oversized hoardings file under the Right To Information Act (RTI). Mathai, who is also the Public Information Officer (PIO), said he had to pay a penalty of Rs 2,500 for not being able to provide the information under the RTI as Rashmi refused to give the file. “Even after being informed, the officer has not given file or information under the RTI,” he noted.
Even after the court orders on removal of these hoardings, the commissioner asked not to do so... Efforts were made to portray me as a culprit and shunt me out of the BBMP, says K Mathai, BBMP Assistant Commissioner (Advertisement, in his report to Palike commissioner
G Kumar Naik.