MAPUSA
The ruling BJP council in Mapusa was forced to defer six out of seven resolutions tabled in the ordinary council meeting on Monday after a belligerent five-member opposition group of councillors exposed the chinks in the functioning and lack of experience in the ruling group.
Chairperson of Mapusa Municipal Council Shubhangi Vaigankar was caught off guard as she failed to provide proper documentation and fulfil the technical requirements while tabling the resolutions before the council.
The chairperson was under intense pressure and faced major embarrassment as she failed to provide answers to probing opposition.
The 13-member strong ruling group of councillors failed to come to her rescue due to a lack of experience in the group.
From the drafting of the resolution to the lack of sufficient material on issues tabled in the agenda, the opposition picked the flaws during the discussion at the council meeting.
When the opposition sought the agreement copy between the council and the sopo (market tax) contractor, the chairperson appeared all at sea.
“We have not been provided with any tender document signed with the sopo contractor. If MMC has not signed an agreement with the sopo contractor then how can we put restrictions and ask the contractor to make good the defaulting amount,” councillor Shashank Narvekar asked.
The sopo contractor paid only half of the mandated deposit amount and further defaulted in paying instalments for two months to the council.
Opposition councillors Kamol D’Souza, Anvi Korgaonkar and Dr Nutan Bicholkar joined Narvekar in demanding the termination of the contract with the sopo contractor.
The resolution to bring more areas under the pay parking in the Mapusa city and municipal market area could not be passed as there was no unanimity among the councillors.
The opposition continued with their pressure and asked the chairperson to come out with a proper plan on how the council is going to implement the pay parking proposal.
“We want pay parking to bring about some semblance of sanity on the Mapusa streets, but don’t come up with half-baked information and expect us to say yes,” Narvekar said.
Former chairperson and councillor Sudhir Kandolkar said the contractor appointed to collect pay parking fees in the market was collecting Rs 5 from every two-wheeler owner entering inside the market and sought to know whether it was legally done.
The plan to develop multi-level parking at the old Red Cross building, which was recently demolished, was also deferred.
Kandolkar informed that the council has already taken a decision to develop pay parking at the old bus-stand site after the new bus-stand comes up and therefore the old Red Cross building site should be developed for commercial purposes to gain revenue for the council.
The proposal to hand over four entry points to the city for beautification to a private party was also deferred as the council could not provide proper information on the plans and the methods that the private party would adopt.
The only resolution that was unanimously passed was to install a traffic signal opposite the Rashtroli Nilkhant Brahman Devasthan in Peddem.
Transfer of kiosks: Ruling panel puts
resolution to vote, oppn cries foul
MAPUSA:
Unable to sustain the onslaught of the opposition councillors, Chairperson Shubhangi Vaigankar put the resolution on transfer of kiosks to blood relation to vote and passed it with 12 ruling councillors voting for while five opposition councillors opposing it.
Councilor Sudhir Kandolkar played it safe and abstained from the voting while Independent councillor Prakash Bhivshet was not present during the voting and therefore marked absent.
Councillor Shashank Narvekar said that the resolution per se was illegal as the decision on the issue was taken without following proper procedure.
“The Chief Officer has put a noting that ‘the council may decide’ without going through the file and finding whether the kiosk owner has all the required documents for the kiosk to be transferred in the blood relation's name,” Narvekar said.
He said as per the Supreme Court ruling an affidavit claiming the transferee is the blood relation of the kiosk owner does not stand the test of law.
“Proper inventory proceedings have to be carried out to decide the real heir for the kiosks to be transferred,” he said.
Four contract staff terminated
MAPUSA:
The Mapusa Municipal Council could not even come to a unanimous decision to retain two out of the four temporary staff and after a heated discussion, the ruling group decided to terminate the contract of all the four staff.
Chairperson, Shubhangi Vaigankar said the council wanted to extend the contract of Rajendra Sawant and Joanna Fernandes while not extending the service of Siddhi Gadekar and Suchita Divkar while the opposition councillors were adamant that all four should be retained.
“When people are losing jobs due to the pandemic and the government wants to provide jobs to unemployed, it’s not right to dislodge people from service. Let us continue the service of all four for at least six months and later take an appropriate decision,” councillor Shashank Narvekar.
Councilor Sudhir Kandolkar also batted for all the four temporary staff and appealed to retain their services for at least three months.
Unable to get a unanimous decision in the matter, the chairperson put the resolution to vote and decided to terminate the contract of all the four temporary staff.
