Nagpur: Public pressure can obtain desired yields from the civic administration. It comes true when the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) top brasses like the Mayor, the Commissioner and the Leader of Opposition yielded to the pressure of a massive ‘morcha’ staged outside the venue of NMC general budget meeting held at Mahal on June 22. When NMC Mayor moved away from the venue, the NMC Commissioner Shravan Hardikar, unable to escape the mounting pressure assured, though helpless, NMC corporator Purushottam Hajare that the former would visit Pardi area in 2-3 days to look into public grievances.
In a dramatic move, when the NMC house was engrossed in listening to the general budget being presented in the house by Standing Committee Chairman Ramesh Shingare, NMC Ward Pardi corporator (Congress) and Satish Chaturvedi loyalist, Purushottam Hajare, taking up various issues of his Ward and finding out no other way to address the issues of his Ward, stormed at NMC meeting hall at Mahal with the support of hundreds of citizens and staged the ‘morcha’.
Presenting himself in a straightforward manner, the NMC Commissoner Hardikar bluntly said, “When you do not pay taxes, how can the development be possible?” Reacting sharply the citizens in the morcha replied back, “We are tax-payers!.” The reply puzzled the NMC Commissioner.
Meanwhile when the police personnel cordoned the morcha, Purushottam Hajare urged the NMC Commissoner to look into the public grievances during the ongoing rainy season itself as the residents of the Ward were facing various difficulties. He also urged the NMC Comissioner to get the proposal regarding regularization of unauthorized layouts passed in the meeting of June 22 itself and forward the same to the state government for its approval, but Hardikar was unwilling to listen to.
Consequently, Purushottam Hajare told the NMC Commissioner that if the demands were not fufilled he would tender resignation from the NMC, and further, the aggrieved citizens would stage ‘dharnas’ and ‘jams’ on national highways to get their demands immediately addressed. Relenting to the pressure, the NMC Commissioner Hardikar had to give an assurance to Hajare that he would visit Pardi Ward in 2-3 days to look into public problems.
It may be mentioned that there are several unauthorized layouts on the outskirts of the city under the jurisdictions of NMC and Nagpur Improvement Trust (NIT). Taxes are unfailingly collected from the residents of these layouts but development works are not being done.
– Rajeev Ranjan Kushwaha ( rajeev.nagpurtoday@gmail.com )
