Mayor prays it does not rain for 5 years

HYDERABAD: Hyderabad’s new Mayor Gadwal Vijayalakshmi appears to have been caught in the eye of yet another storm with her statement that she would pray to God that there should not be rains in Hyderabad for the next five years. The Mayor, who has an uncanny sense of kicking up one controversy or the other, said to a TV reporter on Monday: “I pray to God that there should not be any rains for five years from now.” 

She made the comment when she was asked what kind of an assurance she would give to people who had been affected by a deluge in the recent past on account of nonstop heavy rains that lashed the city for days. The video in which she made the comment has gone viral on social media platforms as it conveyed the impression that she does not want rains at all.

Barely a day after she was sworn in as the Mayor, Vijayalakshmi found herself in the news for wrong reasons. Shaikpet Tahsildar N Srinivasa Reddy, with whom she had a verbal spat in January, found himself transferred and the grapevine had it that it was her way of avenging his defiance to her diktat as corporator to attend to some work she had sought his help for. She was angry with the Tahsildar when he lodged a complaint with the police that she had hindered him from doing his official work. She also lodged a complaint with the police against him that Srinivasa Reddy had acted in a rude manner.

Viral video
The Mayor made the comment when she was asked what kind of an assurance she would give to people to prevent flooding in the city. The video has now become viral on social media