After stir, multi-axle trucks banned on village road

Our Correspondent

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NURPUR, APRIL 11

Following a protest against the plying of multi-axle vehicles of stone crushers of the Mand area on the Thakurdwara-Basantpur link road at Indora in Kangra district, SDM Somil Gautam restricted vehicles’ movement on the road last evening.

Tension gripped the area when residents of Basantpur allegedly deflated tyres and smashed windowpanes of vehicles on Friday night. Villagers alleged that goons of stone crushers had thrashed them and also fired shots at them. The Indora police had lodged cross-FIRs against the crusher owners and villagers.

Kanta Devi, Ganesh Kumar and Jaswinder Kaur, pradhans of Paral, Thakurdwara and Malkana, alleged that the multi-axle vehicles of the stone crushers set up in the Mand area had made their lives miserable. “The noise, dust and smoke pollution by these vehicles is a daily routine and the vehicles cannot be allowed to cross their area,” they said.

Sources reveal that as preventive measures in view of prevailing tension, the local administration will impose Section 144 of the CrPC and order locals to deposit their firearms with the police.

Inquiries reveal that although the entrepreneurs had set up stone crusher units legally in the area, yet the villagers had been protesting against the movement of vehicles from the village link road.

Last year, the district administration had also imposed a ban on the plying of loaded vehicles in the affected gram panchayats after public protests and provided an alternative passage to the stone crushers.

Somil Gautam told The Tribune that a middle path was being explored so that law and order situation could be maintained in the area.