VIJAYAWADA: Mayor Koneru Sreedhar vented his anger on the heads of departments in Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) for their negligent attitude to the pending court cases of various departments, which was not allowing the civic body to increase its earnings in form of revenue from different institutions. On Saturday, an awareness meeting was conducted at the Council Hall here, in the presence of High Court advocate M Balaji and advocate P Durga Jhansi, to make the Municipal Standing Counsel Members (MSCs) and corporators aware of the status of pending cases filed against the civic body.
The meeting lost its seriousness as majority of the department heads, including Municipal Commissioner J Nivas skipped it despite prior intimation given to them by the Mayor for participation in the session. In this regard, Sreedhar instructed the civic body secretary cell officials to prepare a detailed list of absentees and submit the same with R Karikal Valaven, principal secretary (municipal administration), seeking necessary action in the matter. Speaking on the occasion, Sreedhar said that in all 904 cases against VMC were pending with different legal bodies. Of all the cases, 714 were pending at the High Court, followed by eight at Andhra Pradesh Administrative Tribunal (APAT) and 182 at local courts (LCs). In about a year, 499 cases have been resolved against a total of 1403 pending cases, he said.
As per information given by legal officials of the VMC, 327 cases were pending against the Town Planning department, followed by 208 against the Revenue, 51 against the Estate, 48 against Engineering, 54 against Public Health, eight against Education, 14 against Administration departments and another four against others in the High Court. “We are facing severe problems with Revenue and Town Planning department officials, who are not even bothered about the irregularities (taking place) across the city and which has become a major drawback for the civic body in increasing its revenue,’’ Sreedhar alleged. He directed the officials concerned to conduct similar meetings every Saturday, with each department participating in it, for quick redressal of the pending court cases.
The main Opposition party also seems to be concerned with the pending cases. ‘‘Why the civic body authorities are not able to provide proper status of the pending cases to the corporators?’’ Questioned YSRC party’s VMC floor leader B Punyaseela. She appealed to the officials concerned to resolve the ‘Disneyland’ case that remained pending in the court for a long time. The YSRC leader reminded that land banking had reduced in the city after it was made part of Capital City Amaravati.
As a result of this, the VMC has been facing a severe problem to construct houses for the eligible poor in the city. If the officials initiated measures and resolved the case, 57 acre land given to Disneyland would come under the possession of the civic body, which can then execute the housing project in a full-fledged manner, she said.