Additional manpower and continuation of the services of the civic body’s panel advocate, H.S. Himkar, appear to be crucial for Patna municipal commissioner Kuldip Narayan to continue with his crusade against illegal constructions.

In a bid to execute the directives of Patna High Court on expediting the crackdown on unauthorised construction activities in the city, Narayan has sought additional manpower from the state government. He has sent a letter (on November 20) to the secretary of urban development and housing department, seeking deputation of 57 engineers and eight officers from Bihar Administrative Service to speed up the investigation into buildings being constructed in violation of the building by-laws. He marked a copy of the letter to the chief secretary.

“Over 200 buildings have been inspected in the past two months, wherein we have found major violations of building by-laws in most of them and the possibility of scams is also emerging. In such a situation, the investigation process has to be expedited,” Narayan’s letter reads.

In another letter (on November 22), the commissioner has requested the urban development and housing secretary to review a slew of orders given to him by the deputy secretary of the department for removal of Himkar, the civic body’s panel advocate.

Based on a complaint by few lawyers in the civic body’s building tribunal (now almost defunct because of the absence of the chairperson for the past four months) in December 2011, the deputy secretary of the urban development and housing department has written three letters to the commissioner in the past one month, directing him to relieve Himkar from his services.

Political parties have started cashing in on the alleged pressure on Narayan, the commissioner, to stop his ongoing crusade against unauthorised building construction activities.

Senior BJP leader and former deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi alleged that the state government was hand-in-glove with the building mafia and trying to sabotage the crackdown on the illegal apartments.

Modi told The Telegraph on Sunday: “Rather than supporting an officer who is acting against corruption, the ruling JD(U) is trying everything to remove him. Even after a division bench of Patna High Court has categorically directed the state government not to transfer Narayan from Patna Municipal Corporation (till the ongoing cases against unauthorised mushrooming of apartments are disposed of), the state government has recently filed a special leave petition at the Supreme Court seeking his removal from the civic body. Similarly, desperate moves are being made to remove Himkar from PMC, so as to weaken the civic body’s cases against illegal construction activities.”

Madhu Rajak, the state vice-president of the JD(U)’s Mahadalit Cell, said charges of forgery in payment of PMC bills worth of Rs 7 lakh was pending against the lawyer.

Narayan has initiated a slew of surveys and crackdown on illegal construction activities following the directives of the division bench of the high court comprising Justice Navin Sinha and Justice Vikash Jain while hearing in a writ petition. The bench had ordered that till further orders no apartment complex or multi-storeyed building could be constructed beyond 11m in height unless the length of road abutting the building was 20ft wide.

The division bench in another hearing in the same case on September 19 had stated that if the municipal commissioner requires more personnel, he could approach the chief secretary for the needful.