A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA has written to the Maharashtra government alleging that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) spent around Rs 35 crore on five-star hotel stays for its officials during the COVID-19 lockdown.

In a letter to Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Sunday, BJP MLA Mihir Kotecha demanded a probe by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) against civic officials who allegedly spent around Rs 35 crore in 2020 and 2021. “Such behaviour throws light on the BMC caring little about lives of the common people, but keeping its officers in five-star hotels,” Kotecha wrote, claiming that the expenditure was to the tune of Rs 34.6 crore.

Kotecha's allegations can be seen as another attempt by the BJP to corner the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena. The party has controlled the country's richest civic body for the last three decades.? “We should not forget that nurses and other medical staff, who were frontline workers during the pandemic, did not receive their dues and payments on time. Such corrupt practice is drowning the civic body,” the MLA said in the letter.

The Eknath Shinde-led government had on October 31 asked the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) to conduct an investigation into the allocation of works by the Mumbai civic body during the pandemic when the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government was in power. The CAG last month began its probe into the allocation of works by the BMC during the pandemic.?