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BMC Members Explain They Have Inherited All Their Wealth Clara Lewis | TNN An IIT-IIM qualification isn't the only ticket to big bucks. Ask BMC's corporators, whose meteoric rags-to-riches stories could put the most imaginative Bollywood scripts in the shade. A place in the country's richest municipal corporation guarantees a never-ending supply of moolah. Little wonder, then, there is a mad scramble for tickets for the BMC elections next month. Shocking tales of power and corruption would come tumbling out of the BMC house if the authorities bothered to compare corporators' declaration of income with their ostentatious lifestyles. The transition from local trains to Hondas or Innovas, however, is made smoothly and swiftly without anyone batting an eyelid. Check out a resort en route to Goa owned by a former BMC corporator. Before entering the BMC, he was just another ordinary party worker. "The BMC changes lives,'' he told this reporter. A two-time Shiv Sena corporator from Goregaon started life as an autorickshaw driver. He now owns a flat and drives a car. He claimed the huge flat was given to his family after their home was demolished. The car, he said, belonged to his friend, before switching off his mobile phone to avoid further questions. But he should not be worried; there is nothing that is secret about the culture of corruption. Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, at a Girgaum Chowpatty rally in 2002, publicly pointed to corporators who had fattened themselves on BMC cream. Berating those planning to rebel for not being given a ticket, he had declared: "Tumcha pot bharlay, aata dusryana khau dya (your stomach is filled, let others eat now).'' The BMC, according to corporators themselves, offers plenty of money-making opportunities. A contractor is only too willing to offer a "cut'' to bag a project. Reserved public land can be offered for setting up gyms that rake in the moolah, albeit under the guise of public trusts. Corporators have been known to "help'' people, for a fee, to encroach on public land or get plots dereserved. There are also ways to ensure a part of the Rs-25-lakh discretionary fund lands in corporators' pockets. Another former autorickshaw driver, who has become a corporator, now runs a credit society and a security agency besides renting out properties. But he has not moved out of the Kurla slum; he has chosen to expand his tenement by purchasing adjacent rooms. When this reporter called up a corporator about some civic issue last year, he grandly informed that he was at a south Mumbai five-star hotel buying a Rs-1-lakh Mont Blanc pen. Standing committee member Aslam Sheikh once bitterly complained about how people did not know how to handle pens and had damaged his Rs 70,000 pen. Sheikh, a former Samajwadi Party and first-time Congress corporator, admits to owning several such pens. "But I could afford these pens even before I was a corporator. There has not been any change in my lifestyle. Earlier I used to drive Scorpios, now I drive an Innova,'' he said. But the cat came out of the bag soon; trying to explain his riches, he said his father was a corporator for three terms but the family owned two bakeries even before that. A veteran corporator owns a penthouse in central Mumbai, another has hotels in the Konkan. Many have no qualms about justifying the corruption. A corporator brazenly declares: "We are given Rs 4,600 a month as salary and a bus pass. How do you run your family and do public service with this money? So either he has to come from a moneyed background or strike deals to support his family and career.'' MOST POLL HOPEFULS WILL WAIT FOR JAN 14 TO FILE NOMINATIONS TIMES NEWS NETWORK Mumbai: The gods are on vacation and there is nothing much that our aspiring corporators can do but wait for them to return. On Monday, when the ward offices will be ready to receive nominations for the BMC elections, there will hardly be anyone filing his/her nomination; the "inauspicious'' Paush period comes to an end only on January 14 and most will for that. "Malmas, Dhanumas or Kharmas is the period when all the gods are generally believed to be resting and, hence, not available to shower any kind of blessings on earth. It is, therefore, considered inauspicious to carry out any important task during this period,'' astrologer Vipul Saxena said. So political parties, too, are taking their time in announcing their candidates for the elections. Most of them are expected to announce their list only by January 10. "Most of us do not want to risk it and spoil our chances. We prefer to wait and file our nominations on January 14 when the this period will end,'' BJP corporator and group leader in BMC Parag Alavani said. Congress corporator Sameer Desai echoed similar sentiments. "I will, according to the advice of elders in my family, wait till January 14 to file my nominations as I do not want to take chances," he said. But there are a few exceptions who may just have to risk it. "I may lose the nomination if I wait for the auspicious. There are so many waiting to grab a ticket that I will have to take the gamble,'' a Congress hopeful said. URL : http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VE9JTS8yMDA3LzAxLzA3I0FyMDAzMDA=&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom |
