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 CHAPTER XIV.

LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT.

THE LOCAL BOARDS — The Unions — Finances of the boards. THE FOUR MUNICIPALITIES — Anakápalle municipality — Bimlipatam municipality — Vizianagram municipality — Improvements effected by it — Water-supply and drainage — Vizagapatam municipality — Its many undertakings — The water-works.

THE district contains four municipalities; namely, those at Anakápalle, Bimlipatam, Vizagapatam and Vizianagram: and certain portions of the Agency (namely, the part of the Golgonda hills above the Gháts, the Pálkonda hills and the Savara and Kuttiya Khond country in the Gunupur and Bissamkatak taluks) are excluded from the operation of the Local Boards Act. Elsewhere, local affairs are managed by the District Boards of Vizagapatam and Koraput and the four taluk boards working under the former. The Koraput District Board has jurisdiction over all the Jeypore zamindari except the portions of it which lie in the taluks of Párvatípur, Ráyagada, Bissamkatak and Gunupur, and manages matters therein without the intervention of any taluk boards. It began work only on the 1st April 1905, but proposals to extend the Local Boards Act to parts at least of the Agency, so as to compel them to contribute something towards the large and increasing expenditure on local needs which is annually incurred with in them, have been made at intervals ever since 1875, The Vizagapatam District Board controls affairs in the rest of the district except the municipalities and the excluded areas already mentioned. The charges of the four taluk boards under it — those of Narasapatam, Párvatípur, Vizagapatam and Vizianagram — correspond (excepting, again, these excluded areas) with the tracts comprised in the revenue divisions of these names already set out on p. 2.

The seventeen large villages noted in the margin have been constituted unions. As elsewhere, the chief item in their income is the house-tax, which is levied at half rates in Gunupur and Jeypore, but on the maximum scale else-where. The average