Pune: Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) has suspended two of its officials, including an executive engineer and a deputy engineer, nearly a month after former deputy mayor and BJP corporator Tushar Hinge flagged alleged irregularities in the administration’s civil department.The action followed Hinge’s Aug 17 letter to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, in which he alleged irregularities and corrupt practices in the department and sought an inquiry. The CM subsequently directed authorities to investigate the allegations.The suspended officials are executive engineer Vijay Sonawane and deputy engineer Ashok More. Sonawane was named in Hinge’s complaint, which claimed that he and a senior joint city engineer had been working in the same department for several years and were allegedly involved in irregularities.According to suspension orders issued on Sept 11 by PCMC commissioner Vijay Suryawanshi, a preliminary inquiry found several discrepancies in the process of issuing an occupancy certificate (OC) for a residential-cum-commercial project in Punawale.A senior PCMC official said both officials were served show-cause notices on Sept 4 and asked to submit their explanations by Sept 7. The city engineer of the building permission and unauthorised construction control department was subsequently asked to conduct an internal inquiry and submit a report.“The internal inquiry report was submitted on Sept 11. Based on its findings and the unsatisfactory explanations submitted by both officers, they were suspended,” the official said, adding that a departmental inquiry has also been initiated against the two officials.The suspension order stated that discrepancies were found in the total amount of compounding charges recorded by PCMC while processing the OC for the Punawale project.In his complaint to the CM, Hinge had alleged that files submitted to the building department for approval were deliberately subjected to technical objections, deficiencies and errors. He further alleged that Rs5-6 per sq ft was being collected for each file and that files were not processed or approved until such unauthorised payments were made, resulting in deliberate delays in the approval process.The allegations formed part of the complaint that prompted the civic administration to initiate the inquiry.
