CHENNAI: Pressure is mounting on the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) to act against its officials facing allegations of corruption and under Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) scanner for cases pertaining to irregularities, accumulating wealth and the like.
Sources told City Express that the top authorities in the State government had sought details about the action taken against these allegedly ‘tainted’ officials, whose cases were pending for years.
The planning body is yet to initiate action against most of these officials. In a few cases, it had revoked their suspension despite the officials being trapped by Vigilance personnel.
It is learnt that 25 officials, including two deputy planners, are under the DVAC scanner. Six of them were even caught in ‘trap’ cases. Sixteen planners were charged with helping two hotels in Nungambakkam and Koyambedu which allegedly violated building norms. In one case, the investigating officer found the charges partly proven, while in the next, the charges were held as not proved.
However, when the CMDA sought permission to drop the charges, the State demanded the original files on these cases to ascertain the facts. In one of the cases, the government had also directed the CMDA to inform about action being taken to remove the encroachment on a poromboke land in Koyambedu by the hotel. It is learnt that Chennai Corporation had initiated action against its official in the same case.
It is not just the CMDA that is facing the heat, even the Chennai Corporation, Public Works Department and the Tiruvallur District Collector have been asked by the government to initiate necessary action, through a recent communique.
In another case, a deputy planner has been accused of giving planning permission/regularisation of deviation to a builder at Adyar — the file had been circulated to the chief planner in 2013 for certain queries by the CMDA member secretary. Two others — a deputy planner and a planning assistant — are facing charges of accumulating assets disproportionate to known income.
In another case, a senior planner is facing departmental action for allegedly placing faulty multi-storey building (MSB) proposals before the MSB Panel of the authority.
With the top brass now exerting pressure, the CMDA has little option left other than acting against errant officials when there is a conclusive proof.