Row over fixing agenda for municipal meet

Pithapuram: Differences between chairman and vice-chairman of the town municipality over the agenda for the civic body’s general body meeting is a major cause of concern to municipal commissioner and other officials. The bone of contention is supplying power to Sitaramapuram from the town feeder instead of the rural feeder.

The chairman wrote to the commissioner Rammohan Rao that the issue of supplying power to the Sitaramapuram colony through town feeder should be included in the agenda so that the locality gets round-the-clock power supply. However, it was objected to by the vice-chairman Pilli Prasad, alleging that the chairman seeks to protect realtors’ interests in the area. Irked by the vice-chairman’s opposition to it, a peeved chairman refused to sign the agenda.

However hard the commissioner and others tried to persuade the chairman and vice-chairman to give up their adamant stand since it is mandatory to hold the meeting at least once in a month, they did not budge. The officials tried hard to get approval of the agenda from the chairman for the emergency meeting to be held today.

The officials included the town feeder issue in the agenda at last. As a result, the civic body chairman put his signature on it.
The municipal vice-chairman’s contention was that supplying power to the area through the town feeder would help the realtors. As the area gets three-phase power supply from Kottapalli sub-station, he questioned the rationale behind supplying power through the town feeder.

He suspected it to be a ploy of the realtors. “There was no need to include the issue in the agenda,” he said. However, the chairman said that vice-chairman had been blowing the issue out of proportions. The officials would give permission to the lay-outs as per the rules without any outside interference, he said.

By Saride Nageswara Rao