Rain takes life, Mayor and deputy clueless for hours

Newly elected duo unaware of death for 3 hours in spite of monitoring situation in city from control room

Rain takes life, Mayor and deputy clueless for hours

Newly elected duo unaware of death for 3 hours in spite of monitoring situation in city from control room

Hawker Dawood Khan, who died yesterday when a portion of a building collapsed; Deputy Mayor Harish and Mayor Sharadamma in the BBMP control room

Dawood Khan (45), a hawker, died in the building collapse in Anepalya in Ashok Nagar police limits. The incident occurred at 3.30 pm, but Deputy Mayor S Harish kept arguing that no death had occurred till 6 pm.

Mayor Sharadamma, who joined him in the control room at 5.30 pm, was equally clueless.

"What Harish is saying is the official information from the BBMP," she said when asked about the death.
News channels were airing the news even as the mayor and her deputy mayor were denying the untoward incident.

When Harish finally realised his mistake, he was embarrassed. "I am sorry. We were a bit late in knowing as the walkie-talkie wasn't working," he said, before taking the engineers to task for not updating him.

The Mayor announced a compensation of Rs 1 lakh to the family of Khan.

"The confusion that occurred reflects badly on the Mayor and Deputy Mayor, showing their inexperience and irresponsibility. They should have been trained properly before taking charge," said P R Ramesh, former mayor and a Congress leader.

Sharadamma and Harish took charge on Saturday. While Saharadamma is a Std X pass, Harish is an engineering graduate.

No vehicle
The Mayor and her deputy wanted to rush to the accident spot, but discovered they had no means of getting there as they had not yet been allotted the official vehicle. It was a half-hour more by the time a private vehicle was arranged.

By the time they reached the spot, N A Harris, the local Congress MLA, was already there. A relative of Khan was miffed with the authorities.

"Something of this sort happens every time there is heavy rain? I need a reply and we need our area to become safer," said the relative.

Trees, electricity poles and even a telephone tower were uprooted in the affected areas, though several parts of the city remained totally dry.

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