The Pune Municipal Corporation has issued show-cause notices to five junior engineers after finding that they failed to regularly report field inspections and action taken on civic complaints, despite written orders requiring daily monitoring across their jurisdictions.
The notices were issued by Additional Municipal Commissioner Prajit Nair to Suryakant Valmiki of the Vishrambaug-Wada ward office and Smita Shinde, Akash Kadam, Mayur Jadhav and Ganesh Dhage of the Dhole Patil ward office. The action follows directions issued by Municipal Commissioner Naval Kishore Ram on September 10.
Under those directions, junior engineers and assistant commissioners were required to inspect their respective areas every working day and identify civic problems. The listed issues included potholes, damaged manhole covers, faulty footpaths, drainage failures, lapses in garbage management, water supply complaints and encroachments.
The inspection system was designed to link field visits with documented follow-up. Officials were instructed to enter inspection findings and action taken on a designated Google Sheet, with GPS-tagged before-and-after photographs or videos supporting the updates. Weekly reports were to be submitted every Friday, while the municipal commissioner was scheduled to review progress every Monday.
According to the report, the five engineers were found to have carried out only three to four inspections. The notices seek explanations for their failure to comply with the commissioner’s directives. The PMC has not disclosed in the supplied report what disciplinary action, if any, could follow after the engineers respond.
The episode places the PMC’s inspection mechanism at the centre of routine civic service delivery. Potholes, broken covers, drainage faults and footpath damage are typically identified at ward level, making the quality and regularity of field reporting important for determining whether complaints are recorded, assigned and followed through. The mandated photographs and location data are intended to provide a record of site conditions and completed work.
The orders also establish a reporting chain from ward-level inspections to weekly submissions and Monday reviews by the commissioner. The notices indicate that the PMC is using compliance with this chain as an administrative performance measure. However, the supplied report does not state whether the missed inspections resulted in delays to specific repairs or affected particular civic complaints.
The PMC’s next step is to examine the explanations submitted by the five junior engineers. The report does not provide a deadline for their responses or specify any final decision taken against them.
