KASARGOD: On February 22, 2019, 16 days before the Model Code of Conduct for the Lok Sabha election kicked in, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan inaugurated the new bus stand and shopping complex in Kanhangad.
The inauguration of the bus stand was a feather in the cap of the then municipal chairman and CPM leader VV Rameshan because the complex was in the making for nearly 30 years.
Three years down the line, KSRTC has not even made the new bus stand at Alamipally -- 2.2 km away from the old bus stand in the heart of the town -- a fare stage. Passengers getting down at Kanhangad bus stand have to buy tickets for Nileshwar.
But that is the least of the CPM-controlled Kanhangad municipality's worries. The bus stand complex has become a major cash burner for the municipality with little income from it.
The municipality could not find takers for 106 of the 108 shops in the bus stand complex, which was touted to become the next shopping hub of Kanhangad.
The two shops were taken on rent by the CPM-controlled Madikai Service Cooperative Bank to run a medical laboratory. On Wednesday, the municipal council voted 21-17 to return Rs 3.4 lakh to the cooperative bank, the money it took as rent from August 2020 to February 2021, because the municipality could not provide water or power supply to the shops.
The UDF councillors voted against returning the rent because the bank should have checked if the rooms have power and water supply, said IUML councillor KK Jaffar. "We had warned the council also not to give the rooms on rent without making them ready to occupy," he said.
This decision of the council to return the money to the cooperative bank exposes its failure to run the complex, said former IUML councillor K Mohammed Kunhhi.
The failure comes at a huge financial cost.
Every three months, the municipality gives Rs 18 lakh to Hudco to repay a loan of Rs 5 crore, said Jaffar. Of that, Rs 5 lakh is the interest and the rest is the principal amount, he said. "In the past three years, the municipality had to shell out a little over Rs 2 crore from its 'own fund' for loan repayment, and during this time the municipality earned nothing from the complex," he said.
If the municipality could have found takers for the rooms, it could have earned at least Rs 3 crore as rent in a year (Rs 25,000 per room), he said.
Locked up She-Lodge
Three days before the Chief Minister inaugurated the bus stand complex in Kanhangad, he virtually inaugurated Kanhangad municipality's She-Lodge with much fanfare on February 19, 2019. The then chairman Rameshan claimed Kanhangad was the first municipality in Kerala to build a She-Lodge, an idea of the government to provide secure, clean, and affordable accommodation with food to travelling women.
Kanhangad's She-Lodge, a two-storey building with five rooms for lodging, was built at a cost of Rs 45 lakh adjacent to the bus stand complex. After three years and three months, She-Lodge too has not started functioning.
The present chairperson KV Sujatha said Kudumbashree is responsible for managing the She-Lodge and it will start functioning on June 1.
Shopping complex entangled in bylaws
Chairperson Sujatha said the issue of power and water supply has been resolved. "The complex now has power and water supply. We can provide them to the rooms as and when they are taken on rent," she said.
But UDF councillors said power and water were just one part of the problem.
Kanhangad municipality was not finding any takers for the shops in the bus stand complex because of the high deposits traders have to pay as a guarantee, said UDF councillors.
The Rameshan-led council had scrapped the old bylaw for the bus stand and introduced a new one where the rent guarantee was fixed at Rs 15 lakh for rooms on the ground floor and Rs 10 lakh for rooms on the first floor. "We opposed it in the council and challenged it in the high court," said Jaffar.
Rs 15 lakh was too high an amount for small traders to afford, he said.
The court rejected the petition filed by the UDF councillors and Kanhangad municipality put the rooms up for auction not once but thrice. "They could not find any bidders," said Jaffar.
Later, the council led by Sujatha decided to slash the guarantee amount by half to Rs 7 lakh. But any change in the bylaw should be approved by the state government. The revised bylaw is pending before the state government for the past seven months. The councillors said the file was before the Law Department.
"Neither is the state government approving it nor is the municipal council pressing the government to clear it. Every day's delay is causing a huge revenue loss for the municipality," Jaffar said while pegging the loss over the past three years at Rs 9 crore.