The Patna Municipal Corporation headquarters. Telegraph picture

Patna, May 29: Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) is supposed to hold meetings of its elected representatives at least once every month.

However, in the past eight months, the civic agency has called only two meetings affecting scrutiny of many initiatives and hampering approvals of several projects.

Many councillors accuse senior PMC officials and the mayor of deliberately averting the meetings as they expose the administrative failure of the civic body.

According to Section 48 of Bihar Municipal Act, 2005: “The municipality shall meet not less than once in every month for the transaction of its business”. In special circumstances, even more than one meeting can be called during a month, says the act. The rule, however, like many others is completely erratic at PMC which has always seen irregular meetings.

Many councillors believe that board meetings are very important as they bring transparency in the system and responsibility among administrative officials. “In the past eight months, two board meetings were called, one in December last year and other in March when the PMC budget was presented. We have been demanding that the meetings be called more regularly but to no avail,” said Jyoti Gupta, councillor from ward number 37 who represents areas like Bakarganj, Ashok Rajpath and others.

She added the meetings were important to discuss and evaluate step-by-step progress of the projects and to know what hindrances were coming in the way of implementing them. “The empowered standing committee forwards a number of plans and projects which are later presented in the corporation board meeting. Also, it is difficult for councillors to find out about the development of each project from PMC office, which is otherwise discussed in the meeting and we come to know about it,” said Gupta.

A ward councillor from the new capital area said: “Rs 15 lakh each was sanctioned for 72 wards of the corporation area. However, we do not know what exactly caused the delay in money reaching the divisions as no meeting has taken place. The meeting, which was organised in March focused only on the budget and nothing else was discussed. As these meetings expose administrative failure of the officials, they do not want the meetings to take place.”

Mayor Afzal Imam, on the other hand, said administrative instability at the top was reason behind the delay. “For the past five months, no official has remained in the chair of PMC commissioner for long. PMC commissioner Devesh Sehra has recently returned from Bengal after performing election-related works. The additional PMC commissioner was given the charge on a temporary basis and later a new commissioner was appointed for a few days. In these conditions, the meeting could not be called,” said Imam.

“However things will stabilise soon and on June 1, we will call a board meeting. You will see regular meetings from now onwards,” Imam told The Telegraph. PMC commissioner Devesh Sehra was not available for comments.