Cuttack, Oct. 11: Orissa High Court today issued notices to all 54 councillors of the Cuttack Municipal Corporation for ransacking the conference hall during the civic body’s meeting on September 21.

The court also issued notices to the home and urban development secretaries, commissioner of the corporation, deputy commissioner of police (Cuttack) and the officer in charge of Purighat police station. The councillors were protesting against the inordinate delay in executing various welfare projects and demanding quick measures to repair roads and streetlights at the meeting on September 21.

Dayanidhi Lenka, 59, a high court lawyer, filed the PIL seeking investigation and assessment of damage caused by the violence. The petition sought direction for compensation for the damage and recovery from “perpetrators of the crime”.

The division bench of Chief Justice V. Gopala Gowda and Justice B.K. Mishra issued the notices.

During the preliminary hearing today, Lenka pointed out that the deputy secretary of the corporation Nirmal Chandra Nayak had filed an FIR at Purighat police station in connection with the violence.

The FIR named “most of the corporators of CMC, Cuttack” as accused. Taking note of the FIR, the bench directed for implicating all the 54 councillors of the corporation as parties in the PIL and issued notices to them.

The petition said that though the FIR was registered under the Prevention of Damage to Property Act, 1984, and several sections of the Indian Penal Code, on September 24, “the police has not submitted any report on the damages”.

The petition expected the high court to take “suo motu action as per Supreme Court guidelines” and “set up a machinery to investigate the damage caused and award the compensation related thereto on the principle of absolute liability which would be borne by the actual perpetrators of the crime/damage”.