Andhra Pradesh - Vijayawada   

Civic administration asked to stop fixing water meters

Staff Reporter

Corporation meeting witnesses heated discussion on the subject

ANGRY GESTURE: Mayor Mallika Begum at the general body meeting of the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation on Thursday. - Photo: Ch. Vijaya Bhaskar

VIJAYAWADA: The general body of the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) on Thursday instructed the civic administration to stop fixing meters to domestic water connections until the floor leaders of all political parties and elected representatives like MPs and MLAs of the city met Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy and represented the issue to him.

Mayor Mallika Begum read out a ruling to this effect at the end of a heated discussion on the subject.

Moments after the Mayor took her seat to commence the proceedings, floor leaders -- P. Gowtham Reddy (CPI), Ch. Babu Rao (CPI-M) and Yerubothu Ramana (TDP) -- were on their feet demanding that the discussion on water meters that ended abruptly on Monday be continued.

They said that the contradictory statements made by Minister of Municipal Administration Koneru Ranga Rao, who supported the decision, and Vijayawada East MLA Vangaveeti Radhakrishna, who opposed it, had confused citizens.

MP's plea

Lagadapati Rajagopal, MP, who supported the decision, wanted the general body not to think that the State Government had no say in the matter.

The VMC was getting Rs. 600 crores of assistance for its development under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) and the State Government had expressed its willingness to contribute 25 per cent of this as a matching grant, he reminded the general body.

Vijayawada West MLA Sk. Nasar Vali (CPI) said his party would be happy if the Congress Government supplied water to all white cardholders round the clock, but it would be happier if water was supplied round the clock to the poor without water meters.

Mr. Radhakrishna felt that there were several practical problems in supplying free water to the poor, as white cardholders often lived amidst pink cardholders.

Mr. Gowtham Reddy and Mr. Babu Rao also raised the issue of a notification issued by the VMC to privatise the K.L. Rao Head Water Works, Bhavanipuram.

Gulzar clarifies

Municipal Commissioner Natarajan Gulzar clarified that he had instructed the staff to fix water meters to connections in the buildings that had taken the plan approval as individual houses but subsequently been converted into apartments in an illegal manner.

Such buildings would actually have to be demolished as per the relevant statute, but the corporation was regularising them by fixing meters and collecting the related fees, he explained.

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