Speaking to this paper, Bhatia, who has been in the limelight ever since his appointment as the municipal commissioner, said everybody knew what he had done and achieved in the short span of one-and-half month. He said he had never refused to have a dialogue with corporators and was ready to discuss any issue with them even at present.

To a question on where the things went wrong, Bhatia said the misunderstanding between him and the corporators over reallocation of budgetary provisions to the tune of Rs 38 crore brought about the current situation.

He said he had proposed reallocation of funds to provide various civic facilities to the slum dwellers in the city. ``We must feel ashamed if women in this country have to answer nature's call in open,'' Bhatia said and added that he had submitted fresh proposal to the standing committee and was waiting for its decision.

The municipal commissioner, however, made it clear that he would not give up his insistence on his list of priority of works. ``I will continue to submit the proposals till the standing committee approves it,'' he said.

Bhatia strongly refuted the charges levelled against him that development works had come to a standstill during his tenure. He said he had paved the way for number of works which were pending for several years.

Bhatia said the corporation had made a record recovery of tax arrears in last three months. The recovery of property tax in April and May last was Rs 3.5 crore while it had shot up to Rs 8.5 crore in the same months this year. He stated that the PMC, for the first time in its history, attached 101 properties, which are to be auctioned for non-payment of arrears.

According to Bhatia, a number of projects like Mutha river improvement, water supply and sewerage scheme, Pashan lake project, regularisation of illegal strucutres in 38 merged villages and resettlement of slum dwellers in the river bed have been expedited after he took over as the municipal commissioner.

He maintained that he tried to introduce transparency in the civic administration by declaring that all the files, documents, maps, building permissions would be open to public scrutiny. He said the applicant who want to see particular papers do not require to establish his locus standi. He lamented that introduction of transparency in the administration was meeting with resistance from vested interests who fear that their illegal acts in past would now come out in the open.

The municipal commissioner said he had sent 15 proposals to the standing committee for its approval from April 16. However, decision has not been taken on a single proposal by the committee. ``How do you expect the development works to be implemented if the proposal were not approved?,'' he asked. He said the committee had not even taken decision on vital issue of pay revision of the civic employees.

Bhatia said he had the made corporators aware of the fact that 50 per cent of the budgetary provisions in the last civic budget had not been spent. He assured that he would ensure that all the budgetary provision would be spent in the current financial year.

Bhatia said he would continue his action against the so-called bigwigs whenever he received complaints against them. ``I will look into the complaint and take necessary action. I can never ignore complaints against these kind of people,'' he said.