Once shunted, Madan returns to haunt CM

MUMBAI: What goes around comes around.
This is the general feeling in IAS circles after state chief electoral officerU P S Madan issued a notice to chief minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Monday based on a complaint that the CM had grossly undervalued his Pali Hill flat while declaring his assets.
A soft-spoken officer from the1984batch,Madanhas been considered too harmless even to hurt a fly."But by daring to take cognisance of a complaint against no less a person than theCMhimself,Madan has shown that he is capable of taking the bull by the horns," says a senior Mantralaya official. Early this year,Madan was abruptly shunted out as vice-president of the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) by Shinde himself, following pressure from some builders. A few developers had been hounding Madan and were using their political connections to get him transferred out of MHADA mainly because he had refused to do their bidding. Shinde had then toldTOI that hehad shunted him out because he was not takingquickdecisions about allotting land and fetching revenue for the authority.
However, it was widely believed that an influential builder from the western suburbs was instrumental in getting Madan removed because he was a stumbling block in the builder''s designs to acquire the housing board''s plots at throwaway prices by bending the rules.