The
Times of India: Kolkata: Tuesday, November 06, 2012.
The trident
light controversy got a new twist with the Kolkata Municipal Corporation
sitting on an application filed under Right To Information (RTI) Act by former
bureaucrat and Trinamool Congress MLADipak Ghosh seeking some 'uncomfortable'
queries from the civic authorities on process of installation and funds
allocated for trident lights.
The KMC
lighting department received the letter from Ghosh on September 15 and was
supposed to send a reply by a month, according to RTI rules. However, after
passage of six weeks, the state public information officer in the KMC has only
intimated Ghosh that the civic body had received the application and it would
send a reply after collecting data from the civic departments concerned.
However, the
former bureaucrat who is also a former Trinamool Congress MLA is far from
happy. "I sent queries to the civic bosses seeking answers on installation
of trident lights across the city as part of beautification project. The civic
body authorities have not replied to my queries till date and I know for sure
that majority of my queries would not be answered. It is extremely
uncomfortable for the KMC authorities to send replies to my queries, now iam
convinced," Ghosh said.
What did
Ghosh want to know about the trident lights? the very first questioned asked is
when, how and who took the decision to install trident lights in almost all the
areas of the KMC. Then the former bureaucrat went on asking several questions
such as how and when the decision of installation of trident lights was
communicated to the department concerned, was there any specific budget
allocation for such means of city's beautification. Ghosh also asked whether
any proper tender procedure was followed in this respect and what has been the
total expenditure for such beautification. Ghosh also touched the controversial
aspect of making 540 files to keep the value of each file containing the
permission for installation of trident lights less than Rs 5 lakh to bypass a
tender rule of the civic body. Then Ghosh sought to know the addresses of the
suppliers of trident lamp posts and also the suppliers of the decorative
lights. Ghosh said that he would wait for some more time and then seek legal
advice on this issue. "I won't leave the issue. The KMC authorities are
bound to send reply to my queries under the RTI Act," he said. Mayor Sovan
Chatterjee, however, said that he did not know anything about the queries sent
by Ghosh under the RTI Act. " I will check the details. If all the queries
are valid and permissible under the RTI Act, our officials will definitely give
answers," Chatterjee said on Monday.
The anomalies
relating to installation of trident lights was first raised by the KMC finance
department and subsequently the municipal commissioner took up the issue and
asked the KMC lighting department to give a reply to the objections raised.
Though it has been proved beyond doubt that anomalies existed in fixing the
price for each unit of the trident light or in the tender procedure, no action
has been taken by the mayor except removing a Gautam Pattanayak, the DG
(lighting) who in his reply hinted that he had done everything after consulting
the civic higher-ups.
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