Andhra Pradesh - Guntur   

This cinema theatre is history now

Photo: T. Vijaya Kumar

Show is over: Projector at the Krishna Picture Palace being removed by officials on Monday before pulling down the theatre as its lease period with Endowments Department ended. –

GUNTUR: One of the oldest cinema theatres, Krishan Picture Palace, located in the old Guntur city is pulled down by the Endowments Department following completion of the lease period. By evening the lease holder brought an order from the local court asking the Endowments Department to maintain ‘status quo’ for the time being.

A dispute was on for decades over the handing over of the land by Krishna Picture Palace and the lease was renewed more than two decades ago and it came to an end recently but the department did not extend the lease and decided to take physical possession of the land.

The Deputy Commissioner Endowments gave a notice to this effect and when the lease holder did not evict the premises, it sought the help of the Revenue Department and the Police Department to take the physical possession.

On Monday morning, the Mandal Revenue Officer, G. Ravindra, along with the Endowments officials brought a bulldozer and removed the boundary wall.

Several court cases were running on the original land belonging to Yedavalli Vari Satrava in which this theatre was built and from the second generation Siva Kumar is now running the theatre. He said that he had asked for some time so that he could remove his material, but the department officials did not listen to him.

While the demolition work was going on, he told reporters that he had approached the local court for a stay order and was expecting the order to be served on them any moment and by afternoon the ‘status quo’ order was served and work on demolition was stopped. Damage was already done by then and they had removed the projector, seats and demolished the boundary wall. The entire theatre looked like an empty godown, where people had enjoyed one of their choicest movies in the past three decades.

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