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.