VIZAGAPATAM.
Bimlipatam has a much longer experience of local self- government, having established in 1861 a voluntary association, as it was termed, under Act XXVI of 1850, an enactment which permitted towns to voluntarily- tax themselves for their own improvement and provided for the free grant by Government of a sum equal to the amount so raised. This association worked undisputed good. Its income amounted to about Rs. 4,000 and was mainly derived from a small tax on carts entering the town.The Government contribution brought the receipts to about Rs. 8,000.
In 1866 the association was replaced by a council established under the Towns Improvement Act of the preceding year, and this has since continued in existence under the successive municipal Acts which have since been passed. In the forty years since it originated, there have been but four changes among its chairmen; and this fact and the natural advantages of the place in the way of water-supply and drainage — it is situated on the side of a hill facing the sea and contains numerous good wells-have resulted in the town becoming clean and tidy beyond the normal. Four of the twelve councillors have been elected since 1900 and since 1885 the chairman has been chosen by the council.
In Vizianagram a municipal association was founded at about the same time as in Bimlipatam. The average receipts (derived principally from a cart-tax) were about Rs. 450, and Government contributed an equal amount. In November 1866 a council was established under the Towns Improvement Act. In 1888 the rate-payers were permitted to elect twelve out of the sixteen councillors and the council chooses its own chairman. Matters in the cantonment, which has now recently ceased to exist, were separately managed by the military authorities.
Public improvements in Vizianagram have been due chiefly to the Rája and his predecessors and the members of their family, and the municipal council has effected little of note. The former have given the town the college, Sanskrit school, hospital and gosha hospital referred to in Chapters X and IX respectively,and also the large series of market stalls built in 1876 at a cost of half a lakh and known as the Prince of Wales ' Market in commemoration of the present King-Emperor's visit to India in 1875.
Besides carrying on the usual routine duties, the municipality built, in 1885, the clock-tower in the bazaar-street, an octagonal building 68 feet high which cost, with its clock, Rs. 6,400;
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