The enquiry will be conducted by municipal commissioner Girish Gokhale, who has been asked to furnish details of the work orders issued by Mane within a week. Work has been brought to a halt for the moment.

The issue was raised in the MiC on Thursday by health committee chairperson Sardar Tara Singh when a proposal to promote Mane from chief engineer to director (special engineering) was placed before the council. Mane has been handling the post of director apart from that of city engineer. Singh brought to the notice of the council members that the contracts had been awarded even before the budget was passed in the BMC.

According to sources, though the budget was placed for approval only in March and passed on March 31, the contracts were awarded inFebruary and March itself. On February 20, Mane gave five work orders reportedly without seeking the MiC's permission to a single contractor worth Rs 28 lakh. As per the rules, any contract between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 2 crore has to be approved by the concerned committee and over Rs 2 crore by the MiC.

In all, 110 contracts were awarded, worth over a whopping Rs five crore. This comprises work orders to the tune of Rs 1.96 crore in the eastern suburbs and Rs 3.18 in the western suburbs. The budgetary provision for this work for the next financial year is Rs 67 lakh in the eastern suburbs and Rs 1.67 crore in the western suburbs.

In this case, if the contracts for eastern and western suburbs were considered separately, they should have been placed before the building committee and if combined, before the MiC. But Mane, after getting the file signed by Additional Municipal Commissioner V R Ramani, gave the work orders.

In the meeting, building committee chairperson Prabhakar Shinde said he had sent Mane twoletters when he learnt of his actions, but he had received no reply till date. The Mayor then asked Mane to explain his stand in the MiC meeting. Mane claimed that the work was `urgent' in nature and had to be completed before the rains. But the members refused to buy Mane's statement and had an enquiry instituted.

``It is a clear case of corruption,'' stated Sardar Tara Singh. Mayor Nandu Satam said a decision would be taken after Gokhale handed in his report. ``It is not proper to comment at this point,'' he said.