Removal of illegal statues to trigger a row

VIJAYAWADA: The Vijayawada Municipal Corporation's plans for the removal of unauthorised statues in the city irrespective of whichever party has installed them is snowballing into a major controversy.

With the High court in Hyderabad issuing orders for the removal of hoardings, banners and statues from public places, Chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu has directed officials to identify these statues, cutouts and flexies and convince people who set them up to shift them within 15 days and also remove unauthorised ones irrespective of whoever has installed them.

According to a recent survey conducted by the VMC, there are a total of 164 statues and 3,544 flexies, hoardings and banners in the city and the civic authorities have already issued notices to the organisations, political parties and institutions, who have installed the statues in the city.

City Congress leaders have alleged that the municipal corporation was showing favouritism in respect of statues set up the Telugu Desam Party as it is the ruling party not only in the civic body but also in the state. They alleged that the corporation issued notices to other political parties while not doing so regarding the unauthorised statues of NTR.

'We will not allow anyone to remove the statues of Congress leaders installed in the city, unless the unauthorised NTR statues are removed by the corporation,' said city congress president Malladi Vishnu.

Dismissing their threat as of no consequence, Mayor Koneru Sridhar said that the government only installed the NTR statue near Benz circle and it had all the approval letters from the corporation for the installation.

Besides, the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) is flexing its muscles to remove unauthorised statues in the city within two days following poor response from the public to the VMC appeal for a voluntary submission of approval letters pertaining to the statues, hoardings, flexies and banners in the city.

'The illegal installation of banners and statues is leading to disfigurement of public places and at times causing inconvenience to the vehicular traffic. We have already discussed this issue in a review meeting with the collector, where we have decided not to spare any statue if it is set up illegally.

We will take the assistance of police for the removal of unauthorised statues if there is any resistance,' said VMC Commissioner G Veerapandian.