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.

Overcoming hurdles involved in the process, the district administration is leaving no stone unturned to make Nellore district 100% open defecation free (ODF) by the end of March.

There are nearly 236 villages still to be covered under this programme with the officials having drawn plans to mobilise all the necessary men and material to complete the task in the next five weeks.

As of now, nearly 700 of the 936 villages have been declared ODF as individual household latrines (IHHLs) were constructed in the houses of the beneficiaries by providing Rs. 15,000 subsidy from the side of the government.

A massive drive was taken up recently at the instance of Collector R. Mutyala Raju considering the fact that this programme named ‘Atmagauravam’ in Andhra Pradesh had assumed higher significance in the context of the rural sanitation and ‘Swachh Bharath’.

As per an estimate, there were 5.67 lakh households in the 936 village panchayats in the district. Of these households, it was found out that the toilets under the Atmagauravam would be needed for 3.24 lakh households, who had no latrine facility. As many as 2.21 lakh households were now covered under the scheme while another 50,000 households had constructed latrines prior to its commencement.

“We now have to focus on constructing nearly 50,000 toilets in the next few weeks. This will help achieve the 100% ODF status in the district and we are confident of achieving this,” said R.V. Krishna Reddy, superintending engineer, Rural Water Supply.

Issues in usage

He said there were many problems in making sure that the residents had made proper use of the toilets and this societal awareness would be taken up with a greater emphasis in the second phase of the programme.

His observations came in the light of the fact that in many rural households, the newly constructed toilets were not being used to serve the intended purpose but the inmates were turning them into either bathrooms or store rooms.

In some cases, the residents were preferring use of the toilet facility together with bathrooms in the combined format.

The officials are now involving the people’s representatives as part of the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) programme.

With active involvement of sarpanches and local employees, the sanitation programme in the district is expected to yield better results in future.