BHILWARA: After Kailash Meena, the BJP MLA from Garhi in Banswara district, held the feet of a deputy in a police station, a video of Bhilwara Municipal Corporation’s BJP Mayor Rakesh Pathak folding hands and holding the feet of the water department’s junior engineer to stop road cutting has gone viral on social media. The Mayor stated that he could not take the law into his own hands, so he pleaded with folded hands and by holding the feet of the water department officials to stop the road cutting.In the Bhilwara Municipal Corporation area, from Panchmukhi Dham to Panchmukhi Hanuman Temple, the water department was laying a water pipeline by digging the road without the corporation’s permission on Monday evening. Upon receiving information about the road being dug for the pipeline, local councillor Hemant Sharma arrived at the scene and stopped the work. Upon learning that the work of laying the pipeline was halted, the water department’s junior engineer, Shri Ram Meena, also arrived at the scene and urged the councillor not to stop the work. The councillor informed the Mayor, who then arrived at the scene and asked the junior engineer to stop the work, stating that road cutting could not be done without the municipal corporation’s permission. The Mayor pleaded with folded hands and by holding the feet of the junior engineer to stop the work, but when the engineer refused, the Mayor called the municipal corporation’s encroachment team to the scene and seized the JCB machine digging the line.During this time, Mayor Rakesh Pathak stated that there is a lack of coordination among govt departments. Roads are built by the corporation and then immediately broken by other departments like electricity or water. Unfortunately, the municipal corporation is not even informed about this, even though the law requires permission from the corporation to dig even an inch of road. The water department did not have permission from the corporation to lay the water pipeline. The public questions the municipal corporation, and we are accountable to the public who voted for us. The water department officials are not following the orders of the Chief minister and the Collector, who instructed that no road cutting should be done until September 15. Officials are working against the rules, causing inconvenience to the city’s residents, which is unacceptable. I pleaded with folded hands and by holding the feet of the junior engineer on Monday evening, as I cannot take the law into my own hands.Regarding the road cutting issue, Kishan Khoiwal from the water department stated that the public was suffering from water supply issues, which is why the road cutting was done. The department applied for road cutting permission from the municipal corporation but had not yet received it. Before the road cutting, instructions were given to the department’s assistant engineer without informing Bhilwara Collector Jasmeet Singh Sandhu, which led the Mayor to plead with folded hands and by holding the feet of the junior engineer to stop the road cutting.In response to this issue, Congress State President Govind Singh Dotasra tweeted, “Democracy is at the feet of BJP’s tyranny.” The helplessness of public representatives is shameful for democracy. The image of the BJP Mayor in Bhilwara, after the BJP MLA from Garhi, is not only disrespectful to democracy but also a grave insult to the public mandate. Bureaucracy and administration are so dominant in Rajasthan that even though all seven MLAs and MPs from Bhilwara district are from BJP, elected representatives are forced to fall at the feet of officials to raise public issues. This is not a govt, but a circus where the mafia is dominant and corruption is at its peak. Not only is the public being ignored, but even public representatives are not being heard, and officials are shamelessly insulting them in public.
