NEW DELHI, June 15: Within days of his being ousted from power in the just-concluded elections to the Andhra Pradesh Assembly, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) on Saturday sent bulldozers and demolished certain structures on the pavement adjacent to the Lotus Pond residence in Hyderabad of the former Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy.
According to a senior official of GHMC, the civic authorities removed the structures abutting the compound wall to carry out tiling work on the pavement at Jagan’s residence. The structures were being used by security personnel, he said. An earthmover was used to remove the structures.
A senior official of the GHMC’s town planning department said they had informed the concerned persons at Jagan’s residence to remove the structures six months ago to carry out the footpath work. “We have been telling them to remove the structures to facilitate footpath work. The residents of the colony have also complained about the encroachment of the footpath which caused inconvenience to the road users,” the official said.
In the state Assembly held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha polls, Mr Reddy’s YSR Congress Party ended up with only 12 seats in the 175-member state Assembly with the Telegu Desam Party (TDP) along with its alliance partner BJP sweeping the polls with 163 seats. The TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu was on Wednesday sworn-in as the chief minister.
When contacted, YSR Congress party sources said the structures bulldozed by the municipal corporation were purely temporary and made for the convenience of security personnel when he was the chief minister.
(Manas Dasgupta)
