Reporter’S Diary: Fixing tenders become ‘open talk’ at Corporation corridors

A few days ago, this reporter was waiting to see a senior official for some inputs at the visitors’ lounge. After a little while, there came the ‘top’ engineer of the civic body, who is on extension, to see the senior official. Even though the reporter had met the engineer several times regarding stories, the official appeared to have forgotten this scribe.

While waiting at the lounge, he called someone and sounded harsh. “Why are we letting the executive engineer take decisions? You are the senior there and you should control your juniors,” he was yelling over the phone. During the phone conversation, two men clad in white shirts and blue jeans entered the lounge, showed some papers and waited for the engineer’s reply. “Have you talked with the Minister,” he asked them, and they nodded in the affirmative.

“Okay, I am going to meet the official now and talk about this,” he assured before the two visitors took their seats. While the open conversation shook this reporter, he wondered how the conversation went down with the public who were also waiting in the lounge.