Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Civic staff threaten to paralyse work

HYDERABAD: Reverberations of Chapel Road incident when two MIM MLAs allegedly attacked town planning personnel of GHMC continues to be felt on Tuesday, two days after the episode. The entire planning section struck work and the usual hustle-bustle department wore a dark and deserted look.

Chief City Planner B. Purushothama Reddy, who was in the thick of action during the incident on Saturday, last, has gone on leave. All files work, inspections, road widening, demolitions et al have come to a grinding halt everywhere in the capital.

In fact, the entire staff, expressing their solidarity with town planning personnel, held lunch hour demonstrations in the head office and sported black badges. All workers unions including the NGO’s Union have demanded that cases registered against the staff are withdrawn immediately.

They were apparently not mollified by the police registering cases against the two legislators – Afsar Khan and Mauzam Khan on Monday. The unions have demanded that the registered cases be withdrawn and action initiated against “anti-social elements” or else they warned that all the municipal activities would be brought to a standstill.

Though senior officials trying to workout an amicable solution are confident of cooling tempers in a day or two, employees are seething with anger over the turn of events. “It was a small matter of ground plus two built on 80 yards. The owner has built by taking permission through GO.86 which meant it can’t be regularised under the Building Penalisation Scheme. He violated setbacks and even encroached on widened portion of the road,” charged an official.

The official also maintained that the owner had violated court orders by constructing extra portions and the planning staff chose to remove that particular portion only.

“The extent of road widening taken up in twin cities is without parallel anywhere. We have been able to do it with the help of citizens and public representatives. Even during an elected body, nobody obstructed demolitions,” he pointed out.

Common refrain among the staff is that if they “surrender” now, it would only embolden others to do a similar act.

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