From ward officer to top level officials, all promoting favoritism
Ishtiyaq Ahmad
Srinagar, June 22(KINS): Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) , a primary institution of the summer capital, responsible for keeping the city clean and ensuring proper hygiene besides taking steps to ensure development on modern lines, has been of late marred by the politics and internal bickering, which hasn’t only defame the institution, but also cast a shadow on its performance.
Reliable sources revealed to news agency Kashmir indepth News Service (KINS) that while SMC Jammu has been performing excellently, the SMC Srinagar is getting stuck in the internal wrangling. “From ward officers to top level officers, politics is at its peak. There is a deep rooted lobbyism,” they said, adding that the SMC’s work has been badly affected due to the growing internal politics where every individual worker has his/her favorite lobby.
Things came to fore recently, when former Mayor SMC Srinagar Junaid Azim Mattu was ousted under a well-planned conspiracy—an independent corporator moving a vote of no confidence motion while others supporting it clandestinely. The height of things is that four National Conference Corporators violated the party whip, obviously for their own interests to ensure ouster of Mattu.
“They didn’t bother what party would tell them and how the party would treat them but ensured that they go against the Mayor and ensure his ouster,” sources said, adding that “politics and international bickering have badly marred the functioning of SMC.”
“Every employee from ward officer level to top level which includes deputy mayor as well have developed interests in politics, favoritism, lobbyism, promoting corruption and much more,” a senior official in the SMC told KINS, while saying that “the present status of the SMC was not one for which it was known for decades ago.”
“Today there are more funds, more resources, more technical support, but yet politics, and internal rifts between Corporators, has ruined this pious institution,” he said, wishing not to be named.
A ward-officer said that there is a “money game” going on in SMC as every individual has developed a separate political interest to get benefit. “There is a huge fund flow from the Government of India for buying latest equipments, chemicals, and other stuff for the upgradation of the Corporation. But politics is taking a serious toll on everything,” he said.
He said that in six months, everything was mobilized to oust Mattu. “Two motions were moved against him. He survived the first one but failed in the second one. This has happened for the first time in SMC history that the people who elected a Mayor and same people vote against the same,” he said.
Another employee of the Corporation said that SMC Jammu was nowhere in sight till the recent past, but “strong cooperation among the employees” they have made the Corporation as a vibrant organization and all are working as a team. “There is no politics there. In Srinagar, SMC is being ruined by one and all. If things don’t improve there soon, SMC Srinagar will just be a name,” he said.(KINS)
