Residents use ‘kundi connection’ to power streetlights

Rachna Khaira

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 11

While taking an extreme step against the Jalandhar Municipal Corporation’s failure to provide them with basic amenities even after three years of charging the regularisation fee from them, the residents of the New Raja Garden Colony on the Mithapur road are lighting around 550 streetlights on electricity poles through ‘kundi connection’.

Recently, they have purchased and installed street lights by collecting funds amongst themselves. A resident, Gulshan Rai Malik, claimed that while the MC has collected around crores of rupees from them through the regularisation fee, it failed to provide even the basic amenities like roads and streetlights failing which they were forced to take the ‘illegal route’ .

“The failure of the government officials has forced us to take the drastic step. While around 80 per cent of the colony residents had regularised their properties in 2013, however, they are still struggling with the MC authorities to get the development work begins here in the colony,” claimed Rai.

While claiming electricity to be a government property, he said since they have paid the regularisation charges and were entitled to facilities like streetlight, they have taken the extreme step.

Also, the residents lodged a strong protest against the MC’s failure to construct roads in the colony. “Besides some, a majority of the roads have simply vanished from the colony map. Also, while the PWD began repairing the Mithapur revenue road thrice in the recent past, it failed to complete the work so far,” he said.

Also, while the MC boasts of running a solid waste management project in the city, it even failed to send its sanitation staff to collect the garbage from the households. “We have not seen any of the sanitation worker or the solid waste management employees from the last many years. The councillor also failed to tighten the noose around MC authorities to provide us some respite,” said Rajniti Mehta, secretary of the New Raja Garden Welfare Society.

He also claimed that due to the dilapidated condition of the roads, the property value of their houses have also gone down drastically.

“Some residents had even constructed a portion of the road in front of their houses to increase the cost of their respective properties,” he said.

Now, the residents have threatened to file a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Punjab and Haryana High Court against the MC authorities whereby besides demanding their regularisation fee deposited with the MC along with interest and penalty, they would also demand the maintenance charges of the colony spent by the residents since 2013.

Area councillor Balraj Thakur too slammed the MC authorities and said that despite demanding information on the regularisation fee collected from his area, he had not been provided any information so far.

“The MC has collected around Rs 55 crore through regularisation but the entire amount is lying unutilised till date,” claimed Thakur.

Despite repeated calls, Municipal Commissioner Gurpreet Singh Khehra was not available for his comments.