Normally, the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) spares the constituencies that are represented by powerful politicians. If it is a minister, the ACB wouldn’t even look into the constituency. But, in the case of the Machilipatnam assembly constituency, the story appears to be totally different. The ACB is very active in Machilipatnam, especially in the municipality these days.

The ACB is probing into several officials of the Municipality and this is giving sleepless nights to them. Some of them have sent SOS to Minister Perni Nani. But, this doesn’t seem to be yielding any positive result.

The story goes that the minister realized that there were large-scale irregularities in the house tax collection. He had a survey of over 40000 houses done. He found that in a majority of cases the houses were being under-taxed.

Thus, a two-storeyed building was shown as a small RCC roofed house. Similarly, an RCC roofed two BHK was shown as a tile-roofed house. As a result, these houses were being levied less tax and the civic body was losing heavily on its revenue. The survey also showed that a handful of leaders from the erstwhile ruling party were responsible for this.

So, the minister asked the ACB to probe and book the officials responsible for the under-taxing. This is sending shivers down the spine of the officials who had helped the TDP. Some of them have already approached the minister, but to no avail. The ACB raids are now the talk of the town in Machilipatnam.