Pics: Spoorthi Ullal

Daijiworld Media Network - Mangaluru (SP)

Mangaluru, Jan 18: The special session of the Mangaluru City Corporation (MCC) council here which met on Wednesday January 17, cleared underground drainage and drinking water project worth Rs 123 crore and underground drainage project worth Rs 67 crore under ADB second phase, in spite of objections raised by the opposition.

The session chaired by mayor, Kavitha Sanil, which began at 3 pm witnessed frequent verbal frictions and arguments between corporators from the ruling party and the opposition. It continued till 6 pm.

Speaking at the outset, leader of the opposition, Ganesh Hosabettu, criticized the way sanction is being given to project in a lackadaisical manner without proper direction. He said that money under Amrut scheme is beimg diverted to other schemes, noting that specific works were to be executed under Amrut scheme. He said that the corporation here is not able to properly account for the third installment of Rs 100 crore grant from the chief minister's special grants while several other corporations have got their fourth installments of the grant. He wanted to know why second phase of project is being executed under ADB financing at a time when the first phase executed under KUDCEMP has failed.

BJP leaders, Sudheer Shetty Kannur, Premananda Shetty, Vijayakumar Shetty and Roopa D Bangera too accused the corporation of misleading the corporators by releasing funds in trickles. They said they are not aware whether ADB first phase loan was being repaid or not. They felt that it was improper to spend money to correcting the mistakes which happened in the execution of the fist phase of ADB project without laying any new pipeline. They wanted action to be taken against the guilty who were responsible for first phase lapses.

Some ruling party corporators like Deepak Poojary and Muhammed expressed doubts about the scheme and wanted to know why the same was brought to the notice of corporators at the laslt minute when it was ready for approval.

The proposals however were put up for the approval of the session and were passed without any problem with the support of ruling party corporators.