BENGALURU: Taking note of the veracity of harassment meted out to the public, while unearthing huge irregularities during a raid conducted on 45 offices of the Revenue and Town Planning departments of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, the Karnataka Lokayukta is contemplating registering separate complaints against each zone of the civic body.
According to sources, on Friday, officials of the judicial and police wings submitted detailed reports to Justice BS Patil on irregularities found during a simultaneous raid conducted in 45 offices of the BBMP on Thursday evening.
The big raid was conducted as part of a joint plan by Lokayukta Justice Patil and Upa Lokayukta Justice K N Phaneendra.
In the mass raid conducted for the first time, the teams found unaccounted money, rejection of khatas on flimsy grounds, files kept pending without being attended to, failure to register in the inward register to avoid taking time-bound action under the Sakala scheme, and showing 100 per cent progress under the scheme projecting that no files were pending, failing to mark attendance, not maintaining cash declaration register are among several irregularities found during the surprise checks and raid, sources said.
An official who was part of the raid team said, “We received a lot of complaints about harassment of the public in each Revenue and Town Planning office of the BBMP. Therefore, judicial officers were made part of the raid team as they are well-versed in the town and country planning provisions of the law, so that erring officials should not escape by giving evasive answers when they were questioned for pending works.” We don’t just catch wrongdoers and punish them but ensure wrong should not recur, he added.