PUNE: Two years after his furniture was thrown out of Ambedkar hostel by  irate students for illegal occupation, Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) additional municipal commissioner, M S Deonikar, finds himself embroiled in yet another controversy involving his official residence, with activists pointing out that the bungalow he currently lives in has been reserved as public amenity and cannot be used as a residential premises.

Spread over a sprawling 6,000 square feet plot in survey no 20, 3/7/ 3 + 8, in the picturesque Bavdhan, the area had been surrendered by a developer to the PMC, as per the town planning rules, to avail of additional FSI that he needed to erect two high-rise towers on the original plot.

The very purpose of acquiring the land from the developer was to create a public amenity facility on it, but lured by the location and bungalow, the PMC thought it could make a good residence for one of its top officers.

“I do not know what amenity does the public get to enjoy when an additional commissioner moves in such a land,” citizen activists, Vivek Velankar, of the Sajag Nagrik Manch, has stated in a note he sent to the municipal commissioner, Mahesh Zagade.

Delaying the paper work to take legal possession of the building (it’s with the PMC for the last four years), serves many purposes for the PMC. First it doesn’t come under the legal obligation of making any kind of public amenity on it even as its officials enjoy it as their abode, while they are posted here.

However, the PMC thinks nothing of spending huge amount to get it renovated from time to time. The question that surfaces is how come the PMC has spent money on a property that it has not yet acquired legally.

City engineer, Prashant Waghmare, however, does not believe the PMC has violated any rules by converting an area reserved as public amenity into an official residence of its additional municipal commissioner. “The bungalow isn’t big enough to construct a public amenity like a hospital or a school,” Waghmare said, reasoning why he did not get it demolished to build a public amenity.

 He, however, pleaded ignorance that the PMC has spent any money in renovating the bungalow. Documents obtained from the Karve road office, however, show that more than Rs 2 lakh had been spent on some recent reconstruction in the bungalow.