BEST gets its new chairman in Ashok Patil

The election of Shiv Sena corporator Ashok Dharmaraj Patil as chairman of the committee of corporators controlling the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking for the year 2012-13 on Tuesday morning was no surprise. Patil was elected with help of the nine-member strong votes of the Sena-BJP alliance, which ensured his victory over the five-member vote of the Congress-NCP. The MNS and the SP abstained.

In his maiden speech as chairman lasting barely 10 minutes, Patil spent much of his time in thanking top Sena leaders and the committee members for voting him in. Surprisingly, the more controversial topics, like effecting a hike in power tariff and bus fares, were not touched upon, in an effort to keep the speech a brief and uncontroversial one.

A corporator from Bhandup, Patil assured the undertaking’s massive deficit will be lowered without compromising the quality of services.

Recently, power regulator MERC allowed BEST to recover losses of over Rs400 crore by hiking its power tariff.