KOCHI: The Opposition councillors of the Kochi Corporation on Saturday staged a walkout alleging that the ruling front has shown masterly inactivity in dealing with many serious issues affecting the City.They alleged that the factional feud in the Congress party is the major hindrance in executing various plans put forth by the council.However, the council meeting was completed without the presence of the Opposition.In his reply, Mayor Tony Chammany said that the corporation would ask for a Vigilance probe into the alleged tampering of the building tax assessment records.Opposition councillor M P Maheshkumar had raised the issue at the council meeting.He alleged that the assessment records of a hotel on M G Road were tampered. “The occupancy certificate for the hotel was issued in 1993-94 and the occupancy area recorded manually in the register was 835m2. After 1997, the system was computerised.However after the 2011 assessment, the occupancy area record was tampered in the manual register and changed to 4,468 m2,” said Maheshkumar.The mosquito menace and the footpath encroachment were the other major issues discussed in the meeting on Saturday. “The civic body has so far taken every necessary step to strengthen the antimosquito drive. We have recently bought hand-held fogging machines and also started sprinkling saline water at the drains and canals,” the Mayor said.Regarding the encroachments on the footpaths by street vendors, the Mayor said that the corporation had already formed a special squad led by the town planning officer to take stringent action against the encroachers.“Footpaths are exclusively for the pedestrians and the corporation will not let them getting encroached by street vendors. We will seek the support of police and Fire and Rescue Services in removing such encroachments,” he said.
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