Hyderabad: The Endowment Department officials along with the police evicted the tenants of 6 shops along with their material from Fateh Darwaza area of Doodhbowli division of Bahadurpura constituency on Thursday, June 11.
The land in question belongs to Lord Venkateshwara, the presiding deity of a temple in that area, which has been under the endowments department.
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The reason for the eviction given by the endowment officials was that the tenants of 2 out of the 6 shops have not paid rent for the past 3 years, and that an eviction notice was served to the shopkeepers after they failed to pay the enhanced rent agreed upon by the tenants in the past.
According to an endowments official who was overseeing the eviction, the present rent of the shops has been Rs 1,000 for the past several years, which wasn’t sufficient to meet the operational needs of the temple.
The officials maintained that the present value of each of the shops was not less than Rs 15,000 per month, if they were not under the endowment department’s lands.
“If you had paid Rs 3,000 as per the enhanced rent instead of Rs 1,000, this problem wouldn’t have arisen,” he told the shopkeepers who made a sit-in protest at the site, led by a local leader who claimed that there was a court’s order against any eviction without a notice.
The local leader showed how the endowments officials behaved in a high-handed manner, by throwing the material in the shops worth lakhs, outside the premises.
The shopkeepers also alleged that even though they have been offering to pay the earlier rent amount, the endowments officials were not accepting it for the past 6 months.
He said that the issue will be escalated to Bahadurpura MLA Mohammed Mubeen and the appropriate authorities as well.
Even as he was speaking with the media and showing how the endowments officials threw the valuable materials like cameras, computers and other products stored inside the shops, he was detained by the Shah Ali Banda police and taken away.
When contacted, Shah Ali Banda Station House Officer Mahesh Goud told Siasat.com that the police personnel were present there, as the officials had requested them to provide security.
He said that nobody was either arrested or charged, and that the local leader who was taken into custody was not in good terms with the chairman of the temple committee, the reason why he was making an issue out of it.
On being questioned about the materials in the shops thrown outside, Goud said that panchnama was conducted in the shops by the officials concerned before removing the material.
He also said that there was no stay order that was produced by the local leader, and that the order contained nothing significant.
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