CHENNAI: Twenty-four years have passed since the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) in 1992 amended the service rules, which govern the recruitment and service of the staff for the city’s prime urban planning agency. But failure to notify the rules has led to occasional bending of rules and also confusion in the service rules.
It is learnt that as much as 40 service cases pertaining to the CMDA are pending before the High Court of Madras.
Even the internal audit raised queries over appointments being made by CMDA using the draft regulations without ratification from the government since 2007. Some of the appointments were made by relaxing criteria such as age, qualification and service conditions. If these recruitments are not ratified, it would result in confusion, people privy to the issue told Express. The draft service rules which were sent to the government last year were returned to the CMDA and a report was sought on the issue.
President of the Association of Professional Town Planners K M Sadanandh told Express that the CMDA was often nullifying the service rules by repeatedly exercising the power of relaxation even though there are eligible candidates available on merit. “This has affected the functioning of the CMDA,” he said. He alleged that administrative officers had misguided the decision-makers by suppressing the facts in the recruitment matters to favour known internal candidates.
The relaxation in recruitment has been such that while returning the draft regulation, the government wanted a common educational qualification prescribed for categories of appointment.
The Association of Professional Town Planners has already crticised the nature of direct recruitment. “There were lapses on 15 counts and I had brought it to the notice of the CMDA,” says Sadanand. Sadanand says that time has come now for the state government to reassess the manpower in the CMDA.