Mangaluru: The ruling Congress councillors in the Mangaluru City Corporation took on Mayor Kavita Sanil and the Commissioner Mohammed Nazir on Wednesday for allegedly keeping the council in the dark on the projects under smart city mission in the city.
At the monthly meeting of the council, the former Mayor Mahabala Marla, councillors Deepak Poojary, A.C. Vinayraj and Naveen D’Souza said that the council and people of the city had the right to know about the projects proposed under the mission.
When the Commissioner, who is also the managing director of Mangaluru Smart City Ltd., a special purpose vehicle constituted for implementing the projects under the mission, said that 65 projects have been proposed under the mission they questioned the basis on which the projects have been proposed.
They wanted to know the intention of keeping the proposed projects in secret without disclosing them to people and all councillors.
“We are answerable to people. We don’t know what is happening,” Mr. Vinayraj said.
Mr. Poojary said that earlier the Mayor had mentioned about calling a special meeting of the council to discuss and enlighten the councillors on the projects proposed under the mission. But the Mayor, whose term would end next month, has not called any meeting.
Adbul Latif, councillor from the Port ward, criticised the Mayor and the Commissioner for not replacing the old underground sewage lines in his ward especially from the Hamilton Circle to the Port.
As a result the sewage was flowing on the road. He came down heavily on the Mayor for spending about ₹90 lakh for rebuilding the clock tower at Hampankatta when the replacement of UGD lines required less than that.
Mr. Latif who sat on the well of the House for sometime protesting against ignoring the UGD issue got up soon. Immediately Jayanthi Achar, a BJP councillor from Mannagudda also sat on the well of the House stating that the UGD issue in her ward has not been attended to. She also got up later.
Replying to it the Commissioner and the Mayor said that the replacing the old sewage lines in the Port ward has been proposed under the smart city mission and works on the UGD project in Mannagudda has begun yesterday.
The Commissioner justified that he had given an overview of the projects proposed under the mission in the meetings of the council earlier.