BENGALURU: The State Government had to face severe embarrassment on Wednesday as the Karnataka High Court pulled it up for initiating action only against the ministerial staff, leaving unpunished the top officials allegedly responsible for leaving a BBMP’s file unattended for a year. The file was relating to advertisement licensing.
Taking the government to task, the division bench of Chief Justice Dinesh Maheshwari and Justice R Devdas directed the Chief Secretary to take appropriate action against the officials concerned and file an affidavit on Friday, the next date of hearing.
This was after the Additional Advocate General A S Ponnanna informed the court that show-cause notices have been issued to the two Section Officers of the Directorate of Municipal Administration, Urban Development Department, on August 4, 2018, asking them to submit their reply within four days.
The court, however expressed surprise and observed that only Section Officers are being held responsible and not your officers. "You are catching hold of ministerial staff and your Secretaries are not responsible at all... This kind of eye wash is going create problems. Your proposition is disagreeable and these have turned out to be absolutely false. No Saab is responsible, is only Section Officer responsible," the court asked sarcastically.
Case history
The court was hearing public interest litigations regarding unauthorised flex/banners/buntings in city. The Directorate of Municipal Administration, Urban Development Department, had not attended to the request made by the BBMP for amendment to Section 443(1) of the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act, 1976, for the last one year. The amendment was recommended to increase the period from 45 days to 90 days for deemed permission to renew the license of hoardings.
PIL against child locks in cabs heard Bengaluru: The government advocate informed the High Court that the Commissioner of Transport has written to the state government on a PIL seeking directions to remove the child lock system from cabs. This submission was made during the hearing on the petition filed by the Bangalore Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology.