Urban News

“We wrote to the Hadapsar police station today afternoon asking them to take action under the Census Act against seven officials who did not report on duty under,” said PMC Ward Officer, Hadapsar, Madhav Jagtap.

The written complaint comes a fortnight after the corporation made a call to the Hadapsar police station asking officers to take action against the errant government employees.

“We have approached the police under the Census Act, 1948. We put the complaint in writing as reminders from us to the employees did not elicit any response,” said city census officer and deputy commissioner, special, PMC, Pravin Ashtikar. He added that the police action follows a memo sent to the employees to report on duty. “We had earlier issued memo to 750 employees asking them to report on duty. While all others fell in line, these seven officials did not obey the orders,” said Ashtikar. According to the officials, if the charges were proved against the employees they could be awarded imprisonment up to three years by the court.

Besides police action against employees, PMC has asked its enumerators and supervisors not to show any laxity in the tasks given to them. The corporation has deployed 7,654 enumerators and supervisors drawn from different government departments to carry out the listing of the households and prepare the database for the national population register. Officials said some of the enumerators have been showing a lax approach on the pretext that people were not co-operating. While the PMC has already issued an appeal asking the people to co-operate with the census team, it has conveyed to the enumerators that there was no room for unnecessary excuses. “We have issued an appeal that people should co-operate,” said Ashtikar.