Busy mayor ‘unburdened’ – CM shifts portfolio load

Mamata Banerjee has relieved mayor Sovan Chatterjee of the responsibility of tax assessment and collection along with two other departments after he admitted to being unable to do justice to these key aspects of civic administration because of “work overload”.

“Didi (Mamata) has done me a favour by relieving me of certain responsibilities. I was overburdened,” Sovan told Metro.

The mayoral council member for solid waste management, Debabrata Majumdar, gets additional charge of tax assessment and collection. Atin Ghosh, who is in charge of health, will now oversee slum development as well, while the mayoral council member for parks and gardens, Debasish Kumar, has been given charge of corporation markets.

All these departments have failed to meet targets in the 77 weeks that Sovan has been the civic helmsman so far. Civic body officials say average revenue collection is still 70 per cent and little has been done to bring unassessed buildings under the tax net.

The property mutation process is also trapped in the culture of inspector raj. Almost everyone with a pending mutation application in the CMC headquarters has a corruption tale to tell.

Mamata’s choice of the new tax assessment head is a chartered accountant by training who promises to simplify the mutation process. “My target is single-day mutation for anyone who comes to us with all the required documents,” Majumdar said.

Sovan is the first mayor since 1985 not to be in charge of tax assessment and collection, though he retains the pet portfolio — water supply — that gave him his unofficial moniker “Jol”.

Amid murmurs within Trinamul that Sovan was facing the music for political reasons, Sovan spent the better part of Tuesday afternoon de-stressing himself with a dose of classical music at a soiree.

A Trinamul functionary said the changes at the civic body’s headquarters were Mamata’s way of achieving two objectives with one move. “Sovan is our South 24-Parganas district president and we would need him to play a big role in party affairs ahead of the panchayat elections next year. Besides, he was wearing too many hats and the multiple responsibilities were telling on his performance,” he explained.

Officials of the CMC said scheduling a meeting with the mayor for decisions on projects had itself become difficult because of his busy itinerary, including being by Mamata’s side at everything from the Calcutta Book Fair to a special film show with the city’s culturatti for company.

“Slum development in a city with 4,500 registered shanty colonies and 3,000 unregistered ones is still non-existent. Markets owned by the CMC have not been renovated or upgraded for years, while some incomplete projects are hardly moving. We are hoping the portfolio changes made by Mamata will be for the better,” an official said.

The last time a similar reshuffle had taken place in the CMC under Trinamul was in 2003, when Subrata Mukherjee was the mayor.

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