The Gujarat government Thursday appointed the respective district collectors as administrators of the newly formed municipal corporations in Morbi, Anand, Nadiad (Kheda), Vapi (Valsad), Mehsana, Surendranagar, Navsari, Porbandar and Gandhidham (Kutch).
A senior government official said that in the absence of an elected body, the collectors will perform the duties of the elected wing, while municipal commissioners will perform executive duties. The nine new municipal corporations, formed after merging various municipalities and village panchayats, were approved by the state cabinet Wednesday. Late on Wednesday, the government also appointed seven Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and two Gujarat Administrative Service (GAS) officers as the commissioners of the new civic bodies.
The seniormost among the seven IAS officers is G H Solanki, who has been appointed as the Surendranagar municipal commissioner. Solanki has been transferred from his post as District Development Officer of Bhavnagar. A 2014-batch IAS officer, he has a Master’s degree in Agricultural Economics.
Three IAS officers of the 2016-batch — Dev Choudhary, Yogesh Choudhary, and Ravindra Khatale — have been appointed as municipal commissioners of the Vapi, Navsari, and Mehsana municipal corporations, respectively.
Dev has been transferred from his current posting as Deputy Municipal Commissioner of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation. He is a science graduate and has a Master’s in public management.
Yogesh, on the other hand, is a Bachelor of Technology graduate and has a Master’s in business management. Khatale, a mechanical engineering graduate, has been transferred from his current post as Regional Commissioner of Municipalities.
Similarly, three IAS officers of the 2017-batch — Swapnil Khare, Milind Bapna, and Mirant Parikh — have been made municipal commissioners of the municipal corporations of Morbi, Anand, and Nadiad, respectively.
Khare, who has done Bachelor of Technology in Civil Engineering from IIT Delhi, has been transferred from the post of Deputy Municipal Commissioner of the Rajkot Municipal Corporation.
Currently, Bapna is the district development officer of Anand. He is a commerce graduate and has done a Master’s in business law.
Ahmedabad Deputy Municipal Commissioner Parikh has been transferred as Nadiad municipal commissioner. He is also a BTech graduate.
Two GAS officers — H J Prajapati and M P Pandya — have been made the municipal commissioners of Porbandar and Gandhidham municipal corporations, respectively. Prajapati and Pandya were previously Resident Additional Collectors (RACs) of Patan and Kutch, respectively.
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