Patna, Sept. 8: Mayor Afzal Imam, accompanied by a group of councillors, met chief secretary Anup Mukerji today and apprised him of the alleged rude behaviour of Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) commissioner Divesh Sehara, who had left the corporation board meeting midway yesterday.

“The present commissioner has absolutely no regard for democracy and peoples’ representatives. It reflects in the way he talks and behaves with the councillors. We met the chief secretary and demanded disciplinary action against him,” said Imam.

He also said a case was filed against the state government in the Supreme Court as it had rejected the corporation board’s resolution to remove the commissioner from the chair. “In July this year, we had passed the resolution with two-thirds majority of the board members to remove commissioner Sehara. However, the state government rejected our recommendation, saying that according to the Bihar Municipal Act (amended), 2007, no such resolution can be passed against the commissioner if he has not completed one year in the chair,” Imam also said.

He added that the state government, however, had forgotten that the same act talks about appointment of commissioner in consultation with the empowered standing committee of the municipal corporation. “On this ground only, we have filed the case in the Supreme Court and it has been admitted there,” Imam added.

Yesterday, Sehara had walked out of the corporation board meeting accusing that councillors were “talking rudely” to him. The councillors, on the other hand, said it was an alibi on the part of the commissioner as he did not want to meet or answer them as they had been confronting him regularly over the issue of pending civic works and fund release for several projects.

“It is a dirty face of bureaucracy that we are getting to see in the corporation these days. The commissioner’s behaviour towards councillors and public has been so bad that he does not even show up in the meetings and never answers us on the issue of development work. Even more unfortunate is the fact that the state government, which keeps talking about development all the time, is blind to such a situation in the municipal corporation of the state capital,” said Sanjay Kumar Singh, who represents ward number 1 in the civic body.