Nagpur: Barely months after the return of the elected general body, the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) is witnessing the emergence of parallel administrative inspection centres, sources said. The development has resulted in senior officials spending a significant part of their duty hours attending back-to-back review meetings instead of supervising field work.Municipal commissioner Vipin Itankar has already completed review meetings in Laxmi Nagar, Dharampeth, Hanuman Nagar, Dhantoli, and Nehru Nagar zones to assess civic services and monsoon preparedness. Almost simultaneously, mayor Neeta Thakre and standing committee chairperson Shivani Dani-Wakhare have begun conducting their own zonal review meetings. After visiting Laxmi Nagar and Dharampeth on Monday, the duo held similar meetings in Hanuman Nagar and Dhantoli on Tuesday.While the objective is to improve accountability, the overlapping exercise has raised questions within the civic administration over duplication of reviews and the strain it places on the bureaucracy.Every zonal review requires the presence of officials from multiple departments, including public health engineering, public works, sanitation, fire services, gardens and enforcement, besides zonal officers and engineers.Since nearly the same set of officers are required to attend both the commissioner’s meetings and those convened by the mayor and the standing committee chief, officials admitted that several working hours are being spent in conference rooms instead of on roads, drains and project sites.“The intention may be good, but the administration ends up preparing the same presentations, compiling identical data, and attending multiple review meetings on the same issues,” said a senior NMC official, requesting anonymity. “During the monsoon, when field supervision is critical, losing an entire day to meetings affects execution,” he added.At Tuesday’s meetings, mayor directed officials to complete sewer line cleaning and desilting of drains, remove encroachments and roadside markets, ensure no sewer chambers remain open and provide proper barricading at all excavation sites.Corporators from Hanuman Nagar highlighted traffic congestion, encroachments, potholes and sanitation issues, while their counterparts from Dhantoli demanded faster sewer cleaning and drain maintenance.The political messaging behind the exercise is equally significant. With the BJP-led elected body keen to assert its authority after nearly four years of administrator rule, the zonal meetings are increasingly being seen as an attempt by the political executive to independently monitor the bureaucracy.The development, however, has also revived the debate on whether parallel review mechanisms improve governance or merely add another layer of administrative burden at a time when the city’s monsoon challenges demand maximum field presence rather than marathon meetings.
