Jaipur: A recent high court ruling limiting the jurisdiction of Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) has left a section of JDA staff idle, while at the same time leaving Jaipur Municipal Corporation (JMC) short of staff.Officials explained that to implement in a hurry the notification of its extended jurisdiction, JDA delimited zone areas and increased the number of zones to 27. The civic body then issued a notification stating the sanctioned strength of each department and each zone post extension of the jurisdiction.“Several officials from other departments, especially officials from the municipal services, were transferred to JDA to fill up the vacancies. As a result, JMC fell short of manpower, leading to significant disruption of its work. And now, with the HC directive, those added JDA staff and officials are sitting idle as JDA can’t carry out any activities in the added areas until and unless the court revokes its order,” a senior official of urban housing and development (UDH) department said. Officials said that while the jurisdiction of at least five newly formed zones of JDA entirely covers the extended areas, there are a few more zones with jurisdiction covering both the old areas and newly added areas. “Some zones thus have more staff than required. Why shouldn’t the govt transfer these staff back to their parent departments?” said a senior official from the local self-govt (LSG) department.
