Hyderabad: The GHMC general council in its first meeting under the Congress government on Monday began a probe into the irregularities in the advertisement, sanitation and town planning wings, amid much acrimony.
Corporators took to naming officials staying in their posts even after retirement, to which GHMC commissioner Ronald Rose assured that the officials would be removed.
While Mayor G. Vijayalakshmi of the BRS did not previously take decisions regarding advertisements — reportedly due to close supervision of then minister K.T. Rama Rao and his officer on special duty (OSD) — she took a slew of decisions on complaints in the meeting, irrespective of agencies involved or political affiliations.
Sources said that under the BRS regime, when corporators highlighted the issue of officials staying in posts past retirement, the Mayor played the peacemaker, reportedly due to some of them being close to the Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar, the MA&UD special chief secretary Arvind Kumar and OSD Mahender Reddy.
Bothu Sridevi, Cherlapally ward corporators, who shifted from the BRS to the Congress, demanded that the services of Energy Efficiency Services Limited be scrapped due to poor functioning of LED streetlights.
The session on Monday saw heated exchanges between the Congress and BRS members, which reached its crescendo when Congress leaders, including those who joined from the BRS, thronged the Mayor’s chair over Congress nominated MLC-elect Balmoor Venkat being denied a chance to speak.
In addition to corporators, a few city MLAs and MLCs, who are ex-GHMC officials, were also present at the meeting.
For the first time in three years, Deputy Mayor Mothe Srilatha Shoban Reddy of the Congress spoke in the GHMC general body meeting.
Corporators projected themselves as political successors of former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao who was recently awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously recently. His daughter, BRS MLC Surabhi Vani Devi, said that all people considered Rao their relative and thanked the members who remembered her father.
