Moneylife:
Mumbai: Tuesday, 14 October 2014.
According to
an RTI reply received by Shailesh Gandhi, the Home Ministry has even failed to
reply to a proposal aimed at allowing the police to purchase fuel needed for
the 72 speed boats.
After the
26/11 Mumbai terror attack, Maharashtra bought about 72 speedboats to beef up
vigilance on the seafront. However, all the boats are lying idle because there
is no fuel to run them. The Home Ministry has failed to so much as reply, for
over 18 months, to a proposal aimed at allowing the police to buy fuel for the
speedboats.
According to
a reply received by Shailesh Gandhi, a former Central Information Commissioner,
to a query under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the Director General of
Police (DGP) sent a proposal to the Home Ministry to give them powers to
purchase fuel for these speedboats on 16 March 2013, but there has been no
reply even after 18 months.
"I am
pursuing the issue of the abject failure of the State government to follow Act
21 of 2006 which mandates that no file should remain without a decision for
over 90 days. Citizens should put pressure on the government to follow this
Act," he said.
Mr Gandhi,
said, "The speedboats are lying idle with no fuel. Officials who fail to
obey the law and render an anti-terrorist measure dysfunctional are making the
job of the terrorists easy. We must act in time and this is an eye opener of
how delays in taking action can greatly impact our security and make a Rs32
crore purchase, useless junk."
Earlier in
2012, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) also slammed the Maharashtra
Government for not making sufficient provisions for operating the Police
speedboats. “Each boat consumes nearly 200 litres of petrol every day. Since
there is no provision for the expenditure on the fuel and maintenance, most of
the boats are lying idle, defeating the whole purpose,” the PAC had stated in
its report tabled in the state Assembly.
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