Patna: In a damage control exercise, the urban development department of Bihar has suspended an employee and served a show-cause notice on an engineer in connection with a row over a map of India on its website showing Jammu and Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh not as parts of the country.
“We have taken the matter seriously and suspended an assistant Ashutosh Kumar and served show-cause notice on an engineer,” the Urban Development Secretary B Rajendra said today.
He, however, declined to reveal the name of the engineer who has been served the show-cause notice for the oversight in uploading the country's map tagged with Patna masterplan inadvertently showing Jammu and Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh not as parts of the country.
The Urban Development department had deleted the controversial map from its website yesterday within hours of the oversight being detected by the media and replaced it with a political map taken from the Survey of India.
Ahmedabad-based Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT), which had prepared the Patna masterplan, has also been served a show-cause notice. The explanation received from CEPT said the map tagged with Patna masterplan was indicative only and the Urban Development department will soon take a call on accepting the reply and take further action against it.
The row had erupted yesterday and opposition BJP attacked the state government demanding stringent action against whosoever was responsible for the lapse.
A number of BJP leaders like Union Minister of State for Drinking Water and Sanitation Ram Kripal Yadav, Leader of Opposition in legislative council Sushil Kumar Modi and state unit BJP chief Mangal Pandey had slammed the state government for glossing over Jammu and Kashmir and Arunchal Pradesh in the map uploaded on the Urban Development Department website.
Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi too had taken dim view of the matter and promised stringent action against those responsible for preparing the map as well as against those who uploaded it on the Urban Development department website.
