No meetings since 9 months, MUDA works come to a grinding halt

• Today’s meeting cancelled due to Legislative Council election model code of conduct
• Last meeting on 27.8.2021 took up 600 subjects and cleared all of them in just a day

Mysore/Mysuru: The routine meeting called by the Mysuru Urban Development Authority (MUDA) this morning was cancelled due to the enforcement of model code of conduct for the Legislative Council elections to be held next month.

Sounds routine, right? But the fact of the matter is that MUDA has not called for a single meeting since the last nine months. As a result, all the routine public-beneficial works at MUDA have come to a grinding halt. Forget distribution of sites — a reason why MUDA was set up — even the routine meeting has not been called for reasons best known to MUDA stakeholders.

MUDA Council consists of elected representatives, officials and persons nominated by the Government as its members. The last MUDA meeting was held on Aug. 27, 2021 and as per the Urban Development Department rules, MUDA has to call a meeting once in three months to approve projects and other public amenities.

By not conducting meetings for nine months, MUDA is defeating the very purpose of its formation — to take care of the housing needs of the city. MUDA meetings discuss various issues related to problems faced by residents of layouts created and approved by it. All development works and maintenance of gardens in MUDA layouts are approved at meetings. The revenue-generating task of forming new layouts and distribution of sites need MUDA’s approval that is obtained during meetings.

600 subjects in one day

Interestingly, the last MUDA meeting took up 600 subjects and cleared them in just a day. Notably, at the meetings of Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA), subjects are taken up for discussion one-by-one and the unfinished agenda in the day-long meeting is taken up in the next meeting. But the August 2021 MUDA meeting cleared all the 600 subjects in just a day, raising eyebrows.

Even the Budget meeting held on Mar. 31 was limited to presentation of 2022-23 financial papers and none of the new projects were approved. While sources told Star of Mysore that the meetings were not held due to cold war between MUDA Chairman H.V. Rajeev and Commissioner Dr. D.B. Natesh (now transferred), both had denied it earlier. Now KAS Officer G.T. Dinesh Kumar took charge as MUDA Commissioner on May 4.

Policy and finance matters pending

Though the day-to-day work goes on without any hindrances, MUDA has not taken any key decisions involving its policy or finances. Shockingly the issue of over 300 Civic Amenity (CA) sites is pending before MUDA though it has asked the beneficiaries to remit the initial amount. Even the ambitious group housing scheme is pending.

Except for sanctioning plans for private layouts and auctioning of sites, no other work is being undertaken at MUDA.

Even the issue of title deeds for over 3,000 residents of Vasanthnagar, Lal Bahadur Shastri Nagar and Shanthaveri Gopalagowda Layouts    is pending.

The meeting that was scheduled to be held today had over 500 subjects. But the question here is why was the meeting called today despite the officers knowing very well that Council elections will be held in June and model code of conduct is bound to come to force.

This is just a question of accountability, say people who are aware of MUDA affairs.