Govt’s blue-eyed boy won’t ‘dive in muck’ anymore
Nauzer Bharucha, The Times of India
January 26, 2008

He is known to be abrasive, brusque and has a reputation for pushing through infrastructure projects in a tearing hurry. His detractors—many of them in the bureaucracy itself—whisper about his closeness to a certain builder and how he bypasses his superiors and reports directly to the chief minister.

Now for the first time in his two-decade tenure in the IAS, Mhada chief T Chandrashekhar, the blue-eyed bureaucrat of successive governments, finds himself in trouble with his political bosses—he publicly complained after the state government turned down his decision to let Mhada itself develop its encroached plots instead of private developers, who were raking in the moolah.

On Friday, the 1987-batch officer put in his papers and is expected to join the private sector. A source close to him said Chandrashekhar was no longer prepared to “dive in the muck’’ and deal with politicians.

Born in 1963 in Hyderabad, Chandrashekhar has had a controversial tenure so far, earning bouquets as well as brickbats for his work as municipal commissioner of Thane and Nagpur and later in Mumbai as the metropolitan region commissioner.

It was in Thane a decade ago that the feisty officer gained prominence for taking on the mafia as well as local Shiv Sena strongmen and bulldozing through several infrastructure projects for that city. When Thane’s powerful Sena satrap Anand Dighe confronted him along with angry party corporators, Chandrashekhar got support from none other than the Sena supremo, Bal Thackeray. In fact, till today, the bureaucrat gives credit to Thackeray for helping him change the face of Thane.

At one point during his tenure in Thane, a strike and bandh was observed by the autorickshaw and taxi unions with the support of citizens in his support after Sena and Congress corporators sought his transfer. The state government was forced to retain him.

Subsequently in Nagpur, he implemented similar road widening schemes despite stiff opposition from local corporators. However, Chandrashekhar’s critics in that city said he had executed these projects in a great rush and many of the road specifications were not up to the mark.

In 2002, the DF government, under pressure for not improving the infrastructure in Mumbai, brought him to the city as the MMRDA joint commissioner. He was entrusted with the task of implementing the ambitious Mumbai Urban Transport Project and Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project.

It was here that the bureaucrat faced a lot of flak for the manner in which he tried to uproot project-affected people and dump them in poorly constructed dingy apartments in far-flung places. Some activists also complained against him to the World Bank, which was financing some of these projects.

Chandrashekhar also had frequent run-ins with senior officials of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), many of whom saw him as a threat to them because both the agencies (BMC and MMRDA) were simultaneously implementing infrastructure projects worth hundreds of crores.

If Chandrashekhar’s resignation is accepted, he will be among the several bureaucrats in the recent past who have sought greener pastures in the corporate world.


nauzer.bharucha@timesgroup.com