AMC heading for major crisis , there will be no permanent staff in next three years , contractual staff languish without any prospect of regularisation

By Our Correspondent

Agartala, January 1, 2026

The Agartala Municipal Corporation (AMC) seems to be headed for a major crisis as there will be no permanent staff in next three years left in the main office and ward offices of the corporation . There are altogether 39 contractual staff in the AMC working for 12-14-15 years but they have no prospect of regularisation in service because the Mayor Dipak Majumder is completely indifferent to their condition . In stead of trying to have the contractual staff regularised the Mayor is getting people recruited by Safed and even though such recruited staff draw their salaries from Safed authority upon bill payment by the AMC, these staff members are given important responsibilities in various sections including cash which is highly irregular and they also draw various extraneous benefits. Many of them move around in office all day long without doing any work.

Sources from AMC said that the AMC annually earns Rs 40-45 crores but spend Rs 90 crores on only salary bill because of the excess staff recruited by the Mayor under pressure from a number of his close corporators like deputy Mayor Monika Das Datta, Bapi Das, Pradip Chanda , Ratna Datta and another corporator from the southern part of the town. He always does their bidding and keeps the chief minister happy by meeting him daily on one excuse or the other. “Most of the corporators have got a large number of casual staff recruited by the Mayor even though the casual staff have hardly any duty to perform , they just loiter around the office all the time but the Mayor is indifferent and obsessed with maintaining his base in the Ram Nagar constituency as MLA” sources said . After retirement of all the regular staff the AMC will have no permanent staff in next three years. Unless there is immediate intervention by the state government and its urban development department the entire AMC functioning will go haywire in a matter of three years.

Sources also described as ‘most regrettable and worrisome ‘ the fact that the AMC has failed to secure its dues from the government sanctioned by the finance commission because of lackadaisical approach and indifference of officers in charge of the administration and ignorance of the elected corporators , Mayor and deputy Mayor of the AMC. Apart from this, the general people who visit the AMC office in connection with their works are always subjected to various forms of humiliation and delay by the casual staff who are desperate to earn slush money in the form of bribes. Citing another instance of AMC’s scam, sources said that a prime plot of government land in Netaji Chaumuhuni area was given earlier on lease by the AMC’s political authority to the former president of Town Bardowali ‘Mandal’ Sanjay Saha who again leased it out to another businessman in lieu of a hefty security deposit and heavy monthly rent even though the land was supposed to be utilised by the AMC for income augmentation. “Actually if the excess staff is removed and corruption curbed the AMC can run on its own resources but all those who run AMC now are after money , there is no initiative for development work except those financed by central government schemes ; a telling instance in this regard is the recent purchase of ‘Shawls’ by AMC for giving away to learned persons and intellectuals in different wards; the ‘Shawls; have been purchased at exorbitant rates but the quality is very poor ; this is also a major scam which requires investigation” sources said.

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