The Hindu 14.10.2010
Unruly scenes at CMC meeting
Staff Correspondent
Altercation:Councillors in a tussle at the general body meeting of the city municipal council in Raichur on Wednesday
Raichur: Unruly scenes such as throwing papers and water bottles at one another and unpleasant verbal exchanges between councillors of the Congress and the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party marked the general body meeting of the Raichur City Municipal Council here on Wednesday.
The meeting was chaired by Mamata Sudhakar, president of the City Municipal Council. K. Sulochana, vice-president of the City Municipal Council and Tippesh, City Municipal Commissioner, were present.
Trouble began when Opposition councillor Thimmappa Phirangi objected to the contract given for erecting streetlights at some of the rural wards within the city municipal limits.
Alleging that the city municipality had awarded the contract to an unauthorised contractor in violation of the norms, he said that officials had failed to verify the eligibility of the contractor. In fact, the contractor was not a registered supplier of electrical material and had failed to produce the necessary licences, he charged.
Objection
Expressing displeasure over the remarks made by Mr. Phirangi, Congress councillor Jayanna asked the Opposition councillors to be respectful and refrain from making wild charges without verifying the facts. Some Congress councillors, including G. Shivamurthy, expressed their objection to raising issues that were not on the meeting’s agenda.
Altercation
This led to an altercation between the councillors of both the parties. The situation went out of control when some of the Opposition councillors threw papers and water bottles at the ruling party councillors and got up from their chairs in a bid to attack them. M. Eranna, councillor and former president of the council, appealed to Mr. Phirangi to keep his cool.
Later, the meeting decided to entrust powers to the president of the council to approve some of the proposed developmental works, including the construction of a settling tank at Rs. 2.60 crore to provide safe drinking water to citizens, improvement of facilities at the Osmania vegetable market, recruitment of labourers for handling domestic wastes and according administrative approval to the layouts of a private educational institution.
