Poll vultures pester MCH officials

HYDERABAD: The lightning speed with which the Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad (MCH) worked in the run-up to the Afro-Asian Games last month — spending as much as Rs 6 crore in about a month — appears to have given ideas to poll-driven legislators.
The civic body is now getting demands from legislators, including ministers, to repeat the performance in their constituencies before the polls.
With the possibility of elections being advanced, the city’s MLAs are in a hurry to get as many works as possible completed before the dissolution of the Assembly.
Among those reportedly pestering MCH officials to get works completed or to take up new ones are commercial taxes minister K Vijayarama Rao, tourism minister T Srinivas Yadav, Musheerabad MLA K Laxman, Malakpet MLA N Indrasena Reddy and Maharajgunj MLA Premsingh Rathod.
They are also directly calling up lower-rung officials and reprimanding them for not acting quickly enough, an MCH official said.
Not only ministers but MLAs too are conducting reviews of the working of the various departments in the MCH directly with executive engineers and lower staff even without consulting the higher-ups.
They are anxious to rush through the projects before the election code of conduct comes into force the moment polls are called. Further, officials may tend to ignore such petitions from ‘lame-duck elected representatives’ after the Assembly is dissolved.