Barely two days after the municipal council decided to take action against negligent legal counsel of Vijayawada Municipal Corporation in the High Court, the civic body officials had to face an embarrassing situation of withdrawing seizure of shops in the 94-year-old Kowtha Purnanandam Choultry in Gandhi Nagar. A team of revenue officials led by Assistant Commissioner (Revenue) T. Srinivas Rao on Thursday sealed 21 shops and the lodge being run in the choultry, also called as Purnananda Vilas, which were not paying property tax since long.

“The owners claimed to have exemption from taxes according to orders by Madras Court several decades ago. Later, a local court issued an order in favour of the civic body, and since then we had issued several notices asking the owners to pay tax.

The owners then approached High Court which stayed our action four times for a period of eight weeks each time,” Mr. Srinivas Rao told The Hindu .

“On Thursday as the stay period ended we took action. But in the evening I received another stay order from High Court, which stated that the stay is granted until further orders as the respondent [VMC] counsel did not appear before the court. Earlier stay orders stated that the respondent counsel did not object to the plea of petitioners,” Mr. Rao said.

Property tax of Rs. 25 lakh was levied against the choultry owners for the last 10 years, he said.

Red Cross’s tenants

Meanwhile, tenants of Indian Red Cross Society’s building in Gandhi Nagar came forward to pay the rental value to corporation and requested the officials to accept it as tax. The officials, who accepted it, received an amount of Rs. 40, 000 initially and the rest would be paid as rent.

In a similar case at Satram, shops in the city branch of Red Cross were sealed by officials for not paying dues of Rs. 15 lakh a few days ago.