Mumbai: The BMC on Thursday announced that the 'Clean-Up Marshals' scheme will be from April 5, following several complaints from the citizens accusing the marshals of overcharging and extorting money. The marshals were appointed under the 'Swatch Mumbai Abhiyaan'. However, the question arises that despite multiple suspensions and revisions, why did scheme fail?

City activists say that the scheme was bound to fail as the marshals were appointed by private contractors, who are not answerable beyond a point unlike government servants.

"One of the main reason is lack of monitoring and accountability. The prime appointing agency was the BMC and we did not see the civic officials conducting audit of actions taken by the marshals on ground. There was no transperancy and the men misused their powers. They did nothing but looting the public," said Clarence Pinto, an activist from Kalina.

Pinto said that citizens will welcome the decision of discontinuing Clean-up Marshals. While, activist Anil Galgali highlighted that the marshals were busy extorting money from people only for throwing garbage and spitting. They were supposed to remove unauthorised hoardings, which never happened. Also, they took actions in the non-permissable areas like hospitals, causing more trouble to citizens.

In the statement released by the BMC, the primary reason given for discontinuing the Clean-up Marshals is violation of rules. "Not taking actions against places notified by the administration, repeated visits, inspecting and taking actions in places not permitted by the BMC like private hotels, construction sites etc, collecting additional fines from the violators, irregularities in the job among others. The Clean-up Marshals behaviour also damaged the reputation of the BMC," it said.

Activist Kamlakar Shenoy said that allowing private contractors to impose penalty on citizens itself was illegal. "Firstly as per law only public servants can take actions against the citizens. The untrained marshals with unruly behaviour were not answerable to the public. It should have been a civic official taking action against citizens for violating rules."

Shenoy added that the objective of the government seemed increasing the revenue through penalties than training citizens. "If hefty fines are to be imposed from common man for not following rules, fines should be also imposed on the government servants who fail to do their duties diligently," he said.

Deputy municipal commissioner, Kiran Dighavkar said, "As the BMC's by-laws will change, the penalties and actions to be taken will also be revised. Going further, the BMC will not appoint contractors for collecting fines. It will be done by the BMC staff only."

The BMC has appealed to the citizens that the Clean-up Marshals scheme will be discontinued from April 5 and thus if any marshal wearing uniform approaches to take actions, do not entertain them. Across 24 civic wards, 30 marshals were deployed per ward through 12 agencies. The contract of the agencies ends on April 4 and has not been renewed. Thus, marshals cannot collect fines from citizens against any violation.