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MCD engineers sacked

Staff Reporter

9 AEs held guilty of allowing illegal buildings to come up

NEW DELHI: Municipal Commissioner A. K. Nigam on Friday ordered dismissal of nine assistant engineers who were found guilty of allowing unauthorised constructions to come up in their areas. All of them belong to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi's Building Department and were charge sheeted after the Delhi High Court ordered strict action against those who did not enforce the building by-laws in their areas between 2001 and 2005.

After going through the charges levelled against the assistant engineers, the subsequent enquiry report, submissions made by the engineers in their defence and orders passed by the disciplinary authority, the Municipal Commissioner found that they had "committed gross misconduct on account of their failure to stop or prevent unauthorised construction in properties clearly indicting their connivance with their subordinate officials and owners and builders to allow unauthorised constructions", said an official release on Friday.

Mr. Nigam ordered dismissal of the engineers after they were found guilty of charges levelled against them, which tantamount to gross misconduct and dereliction of duty. "The dismissal from service shall ordinarily be a disqualification for future employment," the release added. According to sources, the action was initiated against the nine after an inquiry against them was completed, while the probe against other charge-sheeted engineers is still continuing.

The action comes after Councillors at the last Standing Committee meeting on Wednesday accused Mr. Nigam of adopting a pick-and-choose policy while taking action against corrupt engineers in the civic body.

Cutting across party lines, the Councillors had alleged that while 18 executive engineers were sacked in April this year without giving them a change to present their case, no action was taken against assistant engineers and juniors engineers despite several of them being charge sheeted under "regular department action". At this, the Standing Committee Chairman Jai Kishan Sharma had asked Mr. Nigam to present before the MCD House all facts and files pertaining to the matter by July 19.

After being reprimanded by the court for not initiating action against the guilty engineers a few months ago, MCD's Vigilance Department had released two separate lists of engineers who were found guilt of allowing unauthorised constructions and illegal commercial activities in their areas. While in the first list the names of 95 engineers -- 36 assistant engineers and 59 junior engineers -- were recommended for action, of whom eight assistant engineers were subsequently suspended, the second list of 65 engineers included 11 executive engineers, 22 assistant engineers and 32 junior engineers.

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