PMC honour: mementos for some, flowers for others

Much to its embarrassment, the Pune Municipal Corporation ran out of 80 mementos at a function to felicitate 509 citizens on I-Day. Officials attributed the gaffe to some last-minute entries and some citizens walking away with mementos placed in a hall.

“There was no shortage but some citizens, taking advantage of the crowd, lifted mementos from the general body hall. We could not give mementos to around 80 personalities but felicitated them with flowers and requested them to collect mementos from the civic headquarters on Wednesday,” said Mayor Mohansingh Rajpal.

Continuing with the practice of felicitating achievers from the city, the civic body had decided to honour 509 and had even got a higher number of mementos, 520, to be on the safer side, he said. “Elected representatives recommend names for felicitation. Those who lifted mementos might have done it to misuse it to gain honor in society by showing it to others,” the Mayor, who is from the NCP, said.

The Mayor also said the number of citizens selected was too large. He said the honor will lose importance if so many mementos are distributed.

Each elected representative should recommend a maximum of two but some, like deputy mayor Prasanna Jagtap, are said to have recommended 75 names.

“We would frame a policy to limit recommendations by each elected representative to two so that there are no more than 300,” he added. 

Jagtap, who is from the Congress, however, said he had recommended 45 names. “I had selected only five but had to recommend others suggested by other Congress corporators.” Though each corporator was told to recommend names, he said many preferred to suggest names to him in addition to their own recommendations.

“The credentials of the names are not checked as corporators won’t suggest anyone without their knowledge,” he said, adding, there is no harm in honouring all deserving citizens.

The chaos on Sunday was due to some citizens lifting mementos. To avoid a repeat, the civic body would issue passes to citizens to be felicitated, Jagtap added.

BJP city unit vice-president Sandeep Khardekar said shortage of mementos had highlighted the mismanagement by the civic administration.