The Corporation Saga

Its now a month that the Corporation saga began at the Belgaum city corporation when the Mayor did not attend the Rajostav day celebrations and attended the black day rally.

From that day the only news bite in all papers is just about the Corporation and the politics being played by different parties to it.

Right from Mumbai media to Bangalore media every where there are news snippets of one alleging on the other.

There have been incidents of attack and violence in Pune, Mumbai, Kolhapur Sangli etc but thankfully nothing has happened in Belgaum it self.

Yesterday the Corporation voted against the civic reception for Jnanpith awardee Chandrashekhar Kambar which became easy as the group of 18 Kannada and Urdu group abstained themselves from the proceedings.

Chief Minister Sadanand Gowda has said that he will meet Shiv Sena supremo Thackrey and work out a solution as to how peace could be established.

Many councilors now throw all the debacle of what is happening in the corporation to the New Corporation building it self and many said that, once they have come to new building near the SP office some or the other incident has occurred. A few say that all this is happening because the present BCC building where it stands was a grave yard and hence such kind of awful situations are coming up. A few were also heard saying its better to go to the old building.

The new building which was built by spending crores leaks during the rains and the council has already sanctioned money for construction of a new building on the vacant land in the current premises.

The Belgaum corporation has its own saga to tell, in all other Corporations its the fight of the Political parties like BJP Vs Congress or JDS, but Belgaum is the only corporation from its inception that no political party even fields their official candidate. All file nominations as independents.

And the independents here are really independent, a leader of opposition overnight shifts loyalties and occupies the deputy mayor chair. And the councilors also take great fancy to shift loyalties. Also a notable factor is the intervention of the elected representatives sometimes who are main directors and script writers.

The current fiasco of the show cause notice and the hanging sword of dissolution on the corporation is nothing new. The work under the first 100 crore has not yet been completed, meetings have not been held each month as they have to. Nothing is discussed and many contracts are given and then a objection is raised. The best thing is with a surplus budget many things can be achieved but no one is interested and how can we blame them either, these folks just try to replicate what happens in Delhi.

People reading this might be annoyed with this kind of attitude of the councilors, the Government but whom are we to blame, we have to blame our selves only.

This saga will still continue as the Urban development ministry is yet to take a decision on the reply given by the Corporation, once they say something the action will begin again.