Shiv Sena corporators Monday demanded that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) evict senior IAS couple Pravin and Pallavi Darade from the municipality-owned Malabar Hill bungalow that was being proposed as the new Mayoral residence. The state government has clarified through the General Administration Department that the Darade be allowed to live there as long as they are posted in Mumbai.
Sena corporators said Mayor Vishwanath Mahadeshwar has been hunting for an official home for almost ten months since his election and that the civic body should not give away its properties to state government officials. The matter was raised in the civic Improvements Committee meeting on Monday by former mayor and Sena corporator Vishakha Raut who called the situation an insult to the city’s first citizen.
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Pravin and Pallavi Darade have been occupying the bungalow that belongs to the BMC’s hydraulic engineering department since December 2014, when Pallavi was posted as additional municipal commissioner. Pravin, an IAS officer of the 1998 batch, is currently posted as additional metropolitan commissioner, MMRDA. Pallavi, an IRS officer of the 1997 batch, is holding the post of commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
Since last year, the opposition in the BMC, led by the Congress’s Ravi Raja, had been demanding a probe into the allotment and has demanded that the BMC take back control of the bungalow. The state government, however, has held that as IAS officials in the BMC also occupy government-owned properties, including the municipal commissioner’s official residence, this arrangement of allotting municipality-owned properties to state government officials should be acceptable too.
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Sena spokesperson Sanjay Raut said: “It looks like the state government violated BMC rules and allotted the bungalow to an IAS officer. The BMC must take back the bungalow immediately. The mayor doesn’t have an official residence to live in and is being pushed into an old bungalow inside Byculla zoo, while an IAS couple gets a sea-facing bungalow. This is not acceptable to us.”
The BMC has been looking for a new mayoral bungalow since the previous residence was allotted for a memorial to Bal Thackeray. Mahadeshwar has refused to move into a bungalow inside the Byculla zoo.
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