Pune: While the incident of the leaking roof on the day of the inauguration of the new extension building of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) is fresh in the public memory one more such incident happened on Tuesday during a General Body meeting. A piece of wood fell near a corporator attending the GB.
The new GB meeting hall is located in the new extension building of the civic body. The construction of the extension building started after the space crunch in the existing building was pointed out.
It took three years to complete the work. The civic body spent Rs 50 crore on the construction of the extension. The new meeting hall is inspired by the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation building’s general body meeting hall.
The incident involving the piece of wood falling during the GB once again gave a chance to the opposition to rake up the issue of sub-standard work of the new building.
On Tuesday, Deputy Mayor Siddharth Dhende started reading the Indian Constitution, which was followed by Mayor Mukta Tilak declaring the inauguration of the Shiv Chhatrapati General Body meeting hall. As the meeting started, a few minutes later, the wooden piece fell near Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) corporator Vasant More.
Opposition party corporators called it a proof of substandard work. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) corporators claimed it a conspiracy to damage the BJP’s image.
Speaking to the media, Yogesh Mulik, Standing Committee Chairman, said, “It is a conspiracy of opposition parties to damage the image of BJP.”
While speaking in the GB meeting, Shrinath Bhimale, Leader of House, said, “The PMC has not used wood in the building, except in furniture. I wonder how the wooden piece fell from the dome area, which is made up of steel?”
One of the senior officials of the Bhavan department said, “We have used steel for constructing the dome. There is no wooden material at all. We cleared all minor faults, which were raised by the College of Engineering, Pune (CoEP) in their audit report.
In the afternoon, ahead of the GB meeting, BG Birajdar, professor of CoEP under whose supervision the structural audit of the building conducted, inspected the building, said the official. The leakage incident had happened during the building inauguration function on June 22.
