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Norms were violated during allotment of contracts worth Rs 1,916 crore by the state-run City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO) Ltd during the previous BJP-led

regime in Maharashtra, an official report discussed by the Uddhav Thackeray-led cabinet Thursday has found.

CIDCO comes under the state’s Urban Development department, which was headed by then chief minister and now Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Assembly Devendra Fadnavis. With the

report also indicating that there were serious deficiencies in the allotment of contracts for the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) and the Navi Mumbai Metro Rail (NMMR) projects,

senior government sources confirmed that the ruling coalition has plans to use the report to corner the Opposition in the ongoing Budget Session.

Speaking about the resources spent by government bodies to fight litigations against infrastructure projects, municipal commissioner Praveen Pardeshi on Thursday said that public wealth has

been “actively constrained and literally destroyed”.

He was speaking at a conference named ‘Climate Crisis: Action for Tropical Coastal Cities’, hosted by think tank Mumbai First, in collaboration with the European Union and CSIR-NEERI,

supported by the state government and Union environment ministry.

Nearly acres belonging to the state’s mangrove cell in Thane district will be handed over to the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) for the Airoli-Thane- Belapur

elevated road.

The 33.8 km-long corridor is being constructed from Airoli to Katai Naka, Dombivali. About 30 per cent of the work has been completed and the authority aims to complete it by 2021.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is set for a showdown with its former ally, Shiv Sena, in Mumbai, as it has decided to play the role of the Opposition party in the Brihanmumbai Municipal

Corporation (BMC).

The BJP on Thursday submitted a letter to mayor Kishori Pednekar, claiming the post of the leader of Opposition by nominating party’s Mulund corporator and former Sena leader Prabhakar

Shinde. So far, the Congress was the main Opposition party in the country’s richest body and its corporator Ravi Raja was the leader of the Opposition.

The University of Mumbai (MU) is likely to enter its fourth academic year without accreditation from the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). The varsity applied for the

accreditation in December last year. Even as the university’s Institutional Information for Quality Assessment (IIQA) has been approved by the apex grading body, the new grade is unlikely to

come through before the new academic session.

The IIQA submitted by the university was approved by NAAC a couple of weeks ago, said university pro-vice-chancellor Ravindra Kulkarni. “We are now in the process of submitting the

self-study report (SSR). It should be done in a week or so,” said Kulkarni.

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