Bipin Sankhe, State Chief Architect has written a letter to Ratnakar Gaikwad, President of Council of Architecture (India) and Chief Secretary that state ought to adopt the strategy of Chandigarh and Haryana for providing work to private architects and to promote the state officials.
According to the norms of Council of Architecture, only the government architectures can design the government buildings. Moreover, if the government takes a decision to outsource work to private architect for an important or special project, then the plans for the same have to be approved by the State Chief Architect. Nonetheless, this rule has been violated manifestly by regional offices of Maharashtra government and it has been awarding work to the private architecture firms without the prior approval of chief architect. As noted by Sankhe “the whole process of awarding the contract does not have any transparency”.
The officials hold view that the government structures are sensitive and structures like jails and residential complexes of high profile people remains to be confidential. As stated by the anonymous government official “ If private architecture firms prepares the design of such sensitive places, then what remains the guarantee of confidentiality of design of such building?. In case of any incident, who should be held responsible? The government employees are determined to maintain the secrecy of designs of such high profile buildings; however the same is not the case with private firms. This matter requires some serious action from the authorities”.
Sankhe has also mentioned in the letter that the priority is accorded to the officials with civil engineering rather than the ones with architectural degree. As per him “Council of Architecture (COA) guidelines have not been implemented by government successfully. We are better than others, in terms of experience and education, however are still not considered for the promotion by the government at the level of secretary. We have been the step-motherly treatment”.
In the meantime, causing further embarrassment for government-selected architectural community, PWD has put forth its decision to amend and modify the circular issued by it earlier pertaining to the private architect’s appointment. As added by Sankhe “This is the violation of norms of COA as the requirement to amend the earlier circular does not arise. It simply does not make any point to delegate the powers of architectural officials to the civic engineers”.
