Hyderabad, Jan 9 (Deccan Chronicle) : Several denizens of the city were garlanded by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation on Sunday, as they were found urinating in the open and not making use of the civic urinals.
The new step, styled by GHMC staff as ‘Gandhigiri’, came after the earlier efforts to impose penalties on such defaulters did not yield much results. Officials from the GHMC Circle-8 conducted special drives at the bus stops near Koti, Sultan Bazaar, Chaderghat and Putlibowli, and caught altogether seven men engaged in the act.
There were funny sides to the endeavour. Some youths were shamed and some were provoked, and there were also those who tightened their fists, cocked a snook at the civic staff and made a hurried exit from the scene. The embarrassment for them was more as the civic staff also tried to click pictures of the garlanding “ceremony”.
Said assistant medical and health officer Y. Venkata Ramana, "Our teams offered to garland to them in a Gandhigiri way and asked them why they did not utilise the public toilet available in those locations. The youths promised us that they will be wiser now."
In one instance, however, when the GHMC staff was offering to garland a person at Putlibowli, he chose to argue with the staff before leaving the place in a huff on his two-wheeler (AP09CC-2608). The vehicle, it turned out, was registered in the name of Nilesh Hiralal. It could not be ascertained whether he himself was riding it or someone else.
GHMC staff said they asked him why he urinated on the side of the road and did not prefer to go to the public toilet on the other side of the road. His reply was, “Two persons were urinating there and I followed them. If you implement the rule, you should ask them too. Why are you asking me alone?”
When the team tried to offer him a garland, he went on the offensive, and threatened them by provocatively tightening his fist. The staff allowed him to go, as this after all was Gandhigiri.
As per the GHMC Act, officials can impose a fine of Rs 200 for open defecation or open urination. The civic body imposed the penalty on 19,260 persons last year. In a special drives taken up in the last one week, the civic body imposed penalty against 3,500 persons. None of which seemed to discourage youths.
In an earlier drive, the Hyderabad traffic police had adopted a similar Gandhigiri by offering roses to those who violated traffic rules, like riding motor cycles without helmet, wrong parking, wrong side driving and signal jumping. It had a marginal effect. Also, when VSK Koumudi was the city traffic chief, he had offered sweet boxes to those who followed traffic rules. GHMC officials would continue the special drive against peeing in the streets across the city.