“It is a disgrace to me and the corporation to know that there are so many pending court cases and that the Municipal Commissioner had to appear before High Court due to laxity of the legal cell that failed to deal with the pending cases for years,” said Mayor Koneru Sridhar at the general council meeting held here on Tuesday.
Responding to a question raised by the YSRC floor leader B. Punyaseela, the corporation’s legal cell revealed that there were 1,020 pending cases involving the VMC since 2004 in different courts. In the High Court alone there were 743 cases pending and there was only one legal assistant to represent the VMC in Hyderabad, said legal cell officials. The majority of these cases related to the Town Planning Department, they said.
Mr. Sridhar said: “I have learnt the Municipal Commissioner went to Hyderabad regarding contempt cases about four times recently.
It is bad and a disgrace that there is a huge number of pending cases since more than a decade.”
Council members complained against legal assistant Sudhir and requested that he be removed and two new persons appointed to dispose of the cases speedily. They said the corporation was incurring revenue loss and lagging behind in development. Mr. Sridhar said that he would write to the State government regarding action against the legal assistant and also asked the legal cell in the city to follow up on all the cases and submit a review report to him every month.
No approval for hike
The council members of both the ruling and Opposition parties opposed the hike in the rental value of Tummalapalli Kalakshetram. After renovation, the basic rent of the auditorium has been set at ₹50,000 for cultural events, ₹70,000 for government events, and ₹1.20 lakh for commercial events.
Apart from basic rent, one should pay ₹5,000 towards sanitation and ₹10, 000 for sanitation if there was a supply of soft drinks and food.
Also, the VMC proposed to privatise the sanitation responsibility through the tender process. TDP corporator Kaku Mallikarjuna Yadav said that it was not proper to force cultural associations and societies to pay ₹50,000 as rent when the State government was encouraging cultural activities. “Ravindra Bharathi in Hyderabad is only charging ₹15,000 and VMC too should fix a price of that range keeping in view the concerns of artists,” he said.
Vastralatha row
In the afternoon session chaired by Deputy Mayor G. Venkataramana Rao, YSR Congress Party corporators opposed the VMC’s proposal to reduce the rent of Vastralatha shopping complex from 33% to 15%. They came down heavily on the ruling party as the corporation would incur a loss of ₹11 crore every year.
YSRC’s floor leader B. Punyaseela said that the VMC had no authority to interfere in the issue as the matter was in the court.
