The council meeting of the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) plunged into chaos soon after it began around 11 a.m. on Friday. It culminated in the suspension of all YSR Congress corporators and protests by them in the lobby.
A confrontation by the YSRC corporators with Mayor K. Sridhar over the alleged misuse of his powers for bagging a contract for conducting Krishna Pushkaram led to the pandemonium.
A short while after the House assembled and before the agenda could even be read, YSRC floor leader and 48th ward corporator B.N. Punyaseela raised the issue of charges levelled earlier by her party against some members of the Mayor’s family of leveraging their stakes in a private company for getting pushkaram works contract awarded to them.
The Opposition corporators contended that Mr. Sridhar had no right to conduct the proceedings as the Mayor without giving a reply. But he refused to listen to them saying they could not prevent the agenda from being taken up. He also insisted that he owed no explanation to the accusations made by the corporators.
As Ms. Punyaseela and other YSRC corporators stuck to their argument that the Mayor could not go ahead with the session without making a statement on the contentious issue, he shouted at them. Heated exchanges then ensued between the ruling and Opposition benches and the Mayor tried to attribute motives to the tirade launched against him.
As neither side backed off, disorder prevailed and it led to the suspension of YSRC corporators. They staged a protest at the podium and were evacuated by marshals amidst stiff resistance.
The corporators were eventually sent out of the council hall building but they stayed there till the meeting was over around 4 p.m. Ms. Punyaseela told The Hindu that the Mayor simply brushed aside their allegations and he did not have the decorum to treat his colleagues with respect. He should have come clean on the allegations but chose to silence his critics, she said. “The Mayor is accountable to the house. He should not have dismissed our suspicions outright,” she said. The meeting continued after the eviction of YSRC corporators and various agenda items were unilaterally cleared.
