Andhra Pradesh - Vijayawada   

Cellar a new meeting point

Leaders are using even cellars for holding small election meetings. The cellar of an apartment located behind the Ramavarappadu panchayat office on the National Highway 5 witnessed this kind of activity. The watchman, who also irons the clothes of residents, doesn't bother much about politics and elections. However, elections to the post of village sarpanch generated much heat with several elderly persons and former sarpanches visiting the cellar twice a day. They loiter around, discuss things and hold small meetings. The controversy over auction for the post of the sarpanch turned the place into a hotspot.

Strangers come asking for whereabouts of elders. "Who knows where they stay? They come and go. One of them lives in one of the lanes nearby. Why should I give their details without full knowledge?" the watchman asks, wary of the serious ramifications. For, he doesn't want to be pressed like the clothes.

Though he was narrating the difficulties encountered by his department personnel in enforcing rules, it brought a smile on the face of the listeners.

Addressing the inaugural meeting of SAFAR, a weeklong road safety drive initiated by the Government to create traffic awareness among people, Assistant Commissioner of Police (traffic) T. Prabhakara Babu said there were problems in implementing the helmet and seatbelt rules.

Women pillion-riding two-wheelers carried the helmets with great care as if those were their little children. It was difficult to identify violators of seatbelt rule in air-conditioned cars as the windows were rolled up.

He said use of breath analysers to check drunken driving at tollgates had also led to a lot of criticism.

Even while the audience tried to guess the direction from which the criticism could have come, Mr. Babu quipped that liquor shop owners on either side of the tollgates had lost business and were cursing the traffic police under their breath.

Three shots for one bird seems to be the motto of Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) Commissioner Natarajan Gulzar, as far as doing some thing about the long pending issue of black topping of Panta Kaluva road is concerned.

After the pathetic state of this important link road has been highlighted in these columns on several occasions, Mr. Gulzar took it up seriously enough to try three options simultaneously.

He included it in the list of works that can be sponsored by any citizen; offered a quid pro quo to the Auto Cluster authority ("You spend your money to black top Panta Kaluva Road and the Corporation will take care of supply of drinking water"); and, finally, included it in the list of works proposed to be taken up under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) this year. He, apparently, wants at least one of the options to click.

A clerical typing error got an 11-year-old boy Tellagorla Koteswara Rao entangled in a bind over case at Remidicherla in Bollapalli mandal of Guntur district and he was produced before the Narsaraopet Revenue Divisional Officer recently for second appearance in a petty group clash case recently.

His age was typed 18 and he was also booked along with others in the case.

When he was called in, he came up with a request on a small piece of paper that he be exempted as he was only 11.

The RDO immediately sent a memo to the local SI and asked the Vinukonda MRO to put him in a residential school. So, the error turned out to be good for him.

G. Ravikiran, P. Sujatha Varma and K. Srimali in Vijayawada and Ramesh Susarla in Guntur

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