DTO office dismantled
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, October 26 2015: In what could be interpreted as a serious discord among Government Departments, office of the Imphal West District Transport Officer (DTO) located at Babupara was dismantled allegedly at the behest of Education Department yesterday.

Following the destruction, all official activities of DTO, Imphal West have come to a grinding halt thereby creating many inconveniences to the general public.

Imphal West DTO M Mani told The Sangai Express that he was informed over phone by the office chowkidar about dismantling of the office using excavator at around 7/8 am yesterday.

"Immediately I went to office and it turned out that the chowkidar was not giving any wrong information", he recounted.

No prior information was given about the decision to dismantle the office and why it should be dismantled.

Although some documents were transferred to a safe place by some police personnel, huge volumes of important documents were left strewn all over the floor of the dismantled office.

It was inside the particular office huge volumes of important documents like driving licences and registration documents of tens of thousands of vehicles were stored.

None of these documents can be lost, Mani said.

Informing that many important documents were still missing, he maintained that those officers who supervised the whole exercise should search and bring the missing documents.

The office would be re-opened only after re-collecting all the scattered and missing documents.

But it is still not clear when would the office be re-opened.

The office of DTO, Imphal West is located inside the office premises of Transport Department it is connected with the southern compound wall of the office compound.

Earlier, Transport Department was run at Secretariat before it was shifted to the present location in 1981.The southern compound wall was there since the office was shifted to Babupara.

Together with the DTO office, the southern wall was also dismantled yesterday.

A notification issued by Imphal West SDO A Radhabinod was delivered to the Transport office in the afternoon of October 24.The notification said that the southern compound wall as well as the Imphal West DTO should be removed by October 23, informed an official source.

The notification delivered on October 24 was issued on October 15 and it had the words 'Copy to The Director (Transport), Govt of Manipur' written by hand.

The scattered documents are being collected at the garage located in the northern side of the office compound.

It is said that the DTO office as well as the southern compound wall were dismantled in connection with the ongoing construction work of the administrative office of Ram Krishna Mission School at the Bengali High School compound.

Notably, Transport Department is one of the few departments which has been earning substantial amount of revenue every year.

The department earned a revenue of Rs 5,88,65,142 in 2010-11, Rs 15,35,73,573 in 2011-12, Rs 17,55,29,134 in 2012-13, Rs 19,72,11,227 in 2013-14 and Rs 22,08,27,518 in 2014-15 .

Although Transport Department has been earning substantial amount of revenue which is only rising year after year, no necessary plot which the department can claim as its own has been allotted till date.

Meanwhile, the total number of motor vehicles registered with the State Transport Department till March 31 this year has reached 2.7 lakh (approximately) .

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