It seems all is not right between Mayor Hakam Singh and senior deputy mayor Parveen Bansal. In a recently held Finance and Contract Committee Meeting, Bansal along with deputy mayor Sunita Aggarwal objected to three agenda items stating they were ‘unreasonable’ and ‘against the norms’.

They expressed resentment against the invitation of tenders for advertisement rights being released in newspapers before consulting the Finance and Contract Committee. “This is against the rules as no tender can be invited till the time the issue is not passed by the committee. BJP will take up the issue with the state government.” Despite this, the other committee members did not pay heed to Bansal’s comments and the tenders were given a green signal.

He said, “It has happened in the past as well. One advertisement company had got the rights for 220 unipoles for 7 years for just Rs 5,000 per month for one unipole while the rest of the unipoles later received bids upto Rs 22,000 per month. This way, we are losing Rs 33 lakh per month on the 220 unipoles. So, there needs to be more transparency. I wonder what the interests of our alliance partners are.”

In another instance, Bansal had raised an objection over the decision to allot 100 building sites to three companies at a cost of Rs 3 crore stating there was ‘a big game’ behind the allocation and the companies will use around 300 sites in the name of 100 official sites, therefore, causing a loss to the MC.

In addition to this, Bansal and Aggarwal also raised objections over spending Rs 5 crore on installing fancy lights across the city.

Bansal said, “While our roads lie in such a bad state, focus should not be laid on fancy lights at the moment. Much work needs to be done to maintain the roads, parks and green belts in the city.”

Despite the senior deputy mayor’s reservations, the fancy lights project was given the nod in the meeting.