Gurgaon: In a significant reshuffle of financial authority at MCG, commissioner Pradeep Dahiya on Wednesday ordered joint commissioners to stop exercising financial powers over sanitation and engineering works.Proposals and bills, along with the relevant records, must now be routed to the concerned additional commissioner-cum-head of cluster for approval and further action.Dahiya has also added a layer of scrutiny for bills submitted by joint commissioners up to Oct 20 that are yet to be paid. These too must be placed before the concerned additional commissioner for approval before payment is released. In effect, such bills will not automatically proceed to payment under the earlier approval process. The chief accounts officer has been directed to process all bills for the specified works as per the revised arrangement.The order invokes powers under Section 401(2), read with Section 49 of Haryana Municipal Corporation Act, 1994, and authorises the additional commissioners to exercise financial powers, including administrative approval, for sanitation and engineering works.“All Joint Commissioners shall cease to exercise the aforesaid powers and shall not approve any bills relating to such works. All such proposals and bills, along with the relevant records, shall be forwarded to the concerned Additional Commissioner-cum-Head of Cluster for approval and further necessary action. All Joint Commissioners shall continue to monitor and supervise sanitation, taxation, enforcement and all other duties assigned to them in their respective jurisdictions,” read the order issued by Dahiya on Wednesday.“These orders shall come into force with immediate effect and shall be strictly complied with by all concerned,” it added.The order comes weeks after a vigilance trap in the civic body’s engineering wing triggered allegations by contractors that bribe demands were being made at multiple stages, from allotment of work orders to clearance of bills.TOI had reported on Sept 20 that contractors associated with MCG contractors union alleged demands for illegal payments at different stages of civic projects, including work allotment, bill processing and clearance.While the order does not mention the vigilance case or explicitly link the change in financial powers to the bribery allegations, its implications for the scrutiny and approval of civic works bills are significant.
