Compounding case: Committee to take more time to submit report

Charanjit Singh Teja

Tribune News Service 

Amritsar, June 18 

The inquiry committee constituted by the Municipal Corporation to probe into the compounding case of two hotels near the bus stand will take more time to submit its report to Mayor Karamjit Singh Rintu.  

On Tuesday, a meeting will be held in which the panel was asked to submit its report.   

At the recent MC House meeting, councillor Mahesh Khanna had accused the Municipal Town Planner of violating the building bylaws. 

Earlier, the panel supposed to submit the report to the Mayor on June 14.

MC Joint Commissioner Sourabh Arora, who is also the chairman of the inquiry committee, said, “At the last meeting, the town planning wing of the civic body failed to produce the required documents. We gave them time till Tuesday. The meeting on the issue will be held tomorrow. The panel may take some time to submit its report. It can be more than a week.”        

The civic body had constituted the committee under the chairmanship of the MC Joint Commissioner regarding the compounding case of the buildings of Hotel 49 Golden Avenue and hotel near Army Gun House. 

Besides the Joint Commissioner, the committee includes Ward No. 47 councillor Jatinder Kaur, Ward No. 22 councillor Monica Sharma, Senior Town Planner Tejpreet Singh, Municipal Town Planner IPS Randhawa, the assistant town planner concerned, a superintending engineer (O&M) and deputy comptroller. 

The committee had constituted to examine both cases in detail to ascertain under which circumstances the compounding of these building was done. However, Councillor Mahesh Khanna had claimed that he was not satisfied and demanded a high-level panel in his regard. 

At the last meeting, a heated argument was witnessed between Mahesh Khanna and MC Commissioner Sonali Giri when Khanna demanded their lie detector test. Intervening in the matter, Mayor Karamjit Singh Rintu had announced to conduct an inquiry.