Around 500 Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) engineers staged a demonstration at Azad Maidan on Monday, to protest against the arrest of their two senior colleagues in connection with the mega road scam that rocked the civic body recently.

The protest was staged by members of the joint action committee of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Engineers Union (BMEU) and the Municipal Engineers Association. Two senior officials – former chief engineer (roads) Ashok Pawar and former chief engineer (vigilance) – were arrested last week by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed to probe the road scam. Both had been suspended after the preliminary inquiry report came out.

BMEU secretary Sainath Rajadhyaksha said that before resorting to the protest, they had submitted a memorandum to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, the deputy commissioner of police of the area and municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta.

"The entire action of suspension and arrest was made in a very hurried manner, without a proper inquiry. We have decided that henceforth engineers will work only within the duty hours – till 5.30pm – even if there is excessive work load. It's unfair to take such a brash action," said Rajadhyaksha.

"If the inquiry team wanted to pin responsibility on some authority, then action should have been taken against the additional municipal commissioner in charge of the roads department at the time. Why hold civic engineers responsible?" rued Sukhdev Kashid, secretary, Municipal Engineers Union.

He added that private contractors and third-party auditors were made responsible for the works that the civic body had undertaken. Despite that, they went ahead and suspended top civic engineers. "At a time when the BMC's roads department requires 800 engineers, it has only 140. These 140 are facing an enormous work load. So much responsibility should not be put on a single person," said Kashid.

The union office bearers also claimed that no inquiry has been done and no chargesheet has been filed against the engineers. "All major decisions were taken by senior bureaucrats. And when the decision turns out to be a scam, the blame is passed on to engineers," said Rajadhyaksha, on behalf of his union.

He added that several representations regarding this issue have already been made to the civic chief.