The text of Bhatia's charges against the PMC had been published by the Pune edition of The Indian Express. His salvo against the PMC followed his removal from the post of municipal commissioner after corporators voted him out unanimously at a meeting of the civic general body.

The controversial IAS official had sent a 13-point petition to the State government against the PMC which was followed by some more charges and a demand to dissolve the municipal corporation.

Bhatia had slammed the city civic body for its ``illegal'' ways and made a ``representation'' to the State Urban Development Secretary for the immediate dissolution of the municipalcorporation under Section 452 of the Bombay Provincial Municipal Corporations Act.

When his comments were sought today on the State Government's decision, Bhatia said he was unaware of the order for a probe. But he said if an inquiry was being conducted, then it should be a time-bound affair.

``All details have already been sent to the Government and the inquiry should not take more than two weeks,'' he said, adding that the Government should also take steps to accept his first information report (FIR) against State chief secretary Arun Bongirwar.

In his 101 page petition which he had despatched to Mantralaya seeking dissolution of the Pune civic body, Bhatia had levelled as many as 19 charges against the Corporation and its office bearers, supported by documents as evidence.

Bhatia had dwelt at length on ``the grave mismanagement of the city's funds and development schemes'' and spoken of how ``concepts like accountability, transparency, citizen participation and good governance'' had been given theboot by city fathers.

He had written, saying ``if the city is to be rescued, this proposal must succeed to demonstrate effective citizen participation and to set the right trends for the future development of Pune.'' He had argued his case ``with documentary evidence available in the corporation'' for the dissolution of the civic body.

And the charges ranged from ``malpractices'' and ``abuse of power'' to ``misuse of funds.'' In the summary of his ``representation'', Bhatia wrote that almost 1,000 persons were recruited at the behest of the corporators. Something that blatantly flouted all rules and norms laid down for recruitment.

Another charge levelled by Bhatia alleged that ``works worth Rs 9 crores were not specified in the budget and was kept hidden to be later added by corporators.''

He also claimed that ``wasteful expenditure was incurred by the (then) Mayor and Commissioner on trips to Germany for no valid reason.'' At times, said Bhatia, wasteful expenditure was incurred by office bearerswho were ``not authorised'' in the first place.

All the charges, he said, were based on complaints received from the public and the press. ``The charges can be easily proved from the documentary evidence available in the Corporation,'' he claimed. Further, the former commissioner stated, that ``it is not necessary to wait for each and every charge to be stated to be proved for dissolution of the PMC.''

According to Bhatia, the law under which he had petitioned for dissolution of the PMC had ``never been operated in Pune.''