Mangaluru (The Hindu): Even as the renovated town hall, now fully air-conditioned, was inaugurated on Saturday, pressure is mounting on the Mangaluru City Corporation (MCC) not to hike the rentals steeply for hosting programmes.

Speaking at the inaugural session, Ivan D’Souza, MLC and Sudhir Shetty Kannur, Leader of the Opposition in the city corporation council, urged the Mayor to ensure that even after the renovation, the hall is accessible to the common man.

Keeping pace with the changing times, the hall has been renovated at a cost of Rs. 4.58 crore after a gap of 15 years. Earlier, it had been renovated in 1998. The Governor of the then Mysore state, General Nagesh had inaugurated the hall built on 1.75 acres on December 29, 1964.

Mr. Kannur said that the corporation could hike the rentals by 10 per cent. Mr. D’Souza suggested that the government could fix uniform rentals for town halls of corporations in the State. The MCC should take steps to tap solar energy to the hall as it could install solar panels on the roof of the building.

A B Ibrahim, Deputy Commissioner said now the challenge before the corporation was to maintain the renovated building, the hall and facilities. The corporation should appoint a manager and other staff exclusively for its maintenance even if the maintenance cost reached up to Rs. 10 lakh a month.

Mayor Jesinta Vijaya Alfred said the renovated hall had 900 seats. She said maintaining the cleanliness was everybody’s responsibility. She said the corporation was yet to fix the revised rentals. The hall would be allotted to programmes from December 1. Addressing the gathering, B Ramanath Rai, minister in-charge of Dakshina Kannada said “official apathy” was responsible for the delay in the completing the renovation taken up a year ago.

Photo credit: The Hindu