As many as 27 civic officials, including city engineer Madhav Harihar and the heads of various departments, on Monday went on a one-and-a-half month leave to protest against ``harassment and insulting treatment from Bhatia.''

Among others who have proceeded on leave were assistant commissioners Arun Patil and S N Jawadekar, development engineers P T Pawar and Vijay Keskar, deputy city engineers S G Navle, P M Waghmare, D S Kamble, A V Kalamkar, S K Thorat and chief accountant A R Galinde.

The officers from the water and health department have refrained from going on leave to avoid inconvenience to the public, according to the officials who spoke to this newspaper on conditions of anonymity.

They said, ``The 27 officers submitted their leave applications at the office of municipal corporation after Bhatia gave insulting treatment to Harihar and deputy engineer (building) V M Kharwadkar demanding that they should submit in writting that they were pressurised in an old case.''

They added, ``Bhatia has been asking them to retrieve old files and provide him information. Recently, he had asked the road department officials for information pertaining to a court case of 1987.''

``We have been suffering harassment and humiliation for a long time. However, humiliation of a senior officer like Harihar has come as the last straw,'' they said.