Civic body house meet on June 25

Aparna Banerji

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 22

A 109-point agenda has been released for the upcoming house meeting of the Municipal Corporation (MC) Jalandhar to be held on June 25.

With the expansion of the wards in the MC Jalandhar from 60 to 80 this year, this shall be the second meeting of the MC being held ever since the Congress government came to power, with the first having been held on March 20 this year.

The house is headed by Mayor Jagdish Raja with a majority of Congress councillors who are 64 in number.

Primary agendas included in the meeting shall be the proposal of the recruitment of about 200 safai sewaks in the MC, the confirmation of the land for a slaughterhouse at Gadaipur village, construction of foot bridges across the city, among a host of previously proposed development projects.

One of the most controversial agendas included for the meeting is the purchase of an 8 to 10 acre land at Wariana for the setting up of a factory to recycle the city’s garbage – objections to which had been raised by opposition councillor Lakhbir Singh Bajwa – who had demanded the project be stationed at Jamsher, where a land has already been bought for the purpose. He had skipped the previous MC meeting in view of the issue.

While the Municipal Corporation (MC) House had passed a budget of Rs 587.13 crore during the previous meeting, during this meet, new proposals worth about Rs 70 crore have been listed on the agenda.

Among the new works proposed in the agenda include Rs 55 crore for roads, 70 lakh for water supply related works, 1.5 crore for the procurement of equipment for sewerage related projects, 4 crore for replacement of 37 tube-wells, among others.

Among the previous pending projects to be included in the agenda are Rs 274 crore to be spent for replacing the old street lights with LED lights. While the work of installing new LED lights on streetlights has already been conducted on about 5,000 streetlights of the city, 65,000 lights shall get replaced under the project.

The Leader of the opposition Maniinder Singh Chattha said he was expecting to see some major proposals regarding road work, patchwork and sewerage projects to be included in the MC agenda, which he had failed to see.

Wariana project — councillor to raise objections

Peeved at the Wariana dump proposal being included in the upcoming meeting, councillor of ward number 76, Lakhvir Singh Bajwa, is all set to raise objections to the project in the upcoming meeting.

Among the previously passed projects, the work of the putting up of LED lights in the district is one of the major proposals. Bajwa said, “We are totally against the project being set up in our ward. The land is right in the middle of the ward and residents of various colonies will be directly affected. Residents of Guru Ram Das Nagar, Mata Sant Kaur Nagar, Jalandhar Prime, Jalandhar Kunj, Jalandhar Vihar and Wariana shall be affected by the project. There is already a 24-acre land at Jamsher, why not put the project there? In public interest hence, we can’t allow the project. The committee made to decide for the project also included councillors Pawan Kumar (ward 30), Rina Kaur (59) and Paramjit Singh (50) were not vocal about it.”