TRS corporators face illegal building racket charge
If builder pays a bribe, corporators are accused of stopping GHMC staff from taking action.
Hyderabad: Criminality in politics doesn’t seem to have abated much. In 2017, so far, four criminal cases have been booked against TRS corporators.
The cases are serious land grabbing, kidnap, assault and attempt to murder.
Cases have been registered against the corporator or an immediate family member. Corporators, irrespective of the party they belong to, are frequently involved in the illegal structures racket in the city.
They allegedly appoint private agents who identify upcoming structures, legal or illegal, and demand money from the builders to allow work to go on.
The amount of the bribe they demand depends on whether building permission has been granted or the structure is illegal. They also try to protect illegal buildings when GHMC staff wants to demolish them.
In most cases registered against corporators, the charge is that they have intervened in construction activity, and land and money settlements.
A case was registered in 2017 against the TRS Chaitanyapuri corporator Vittal Reddy, who allegedly demanded a bribe from a person who was constructing a building.
Mr Reddy threatened that all the GHMC permissions would be cancelled if he failed to pay a bribe of Rs 10 lakh.
The building’s owner lodged a police complaint against Mr Reddy and cases have been filed against the corporator under IPC Sections 324 (causing hurt), 341 (punishment for wrongful restraint), 385 (putting person in fear of injury), 447 (punishment for criminal trespass and 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation).
Part of the problem is that men with a criminal history are elected as local representatives by political parties.
Fifteen of the 150 corporators have criminal antecedents, and they belong to the TRS and the MIM, the two major winners in the civic polls last year.
As many as 72 candidates with a criminal past contested the polls, and 17 got elected nine from the MIM and eight from the TRS. The Congress and the TD-BJP winners have no criminal history.