High drama witnessed at MC meeting

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj

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Jalandhar, January 7

Taunts, sarcasm, complaints, and harsh comments welcomed Mayor Jagdish Raja in the last General House meeting of the Congress-led Municipal Corporation held today. Several dramatic scenes were also witnessed.

In the past five years, Raja had faced backlash from every party leader, including the councillors of his own party. In his today’s speech, when he called his tenure as mayor as a nice ‘journey’ thanked everyone present in the meeting, Congress councillor Des Raj Jassal questioned, “Tusi mayor vaali kedi Bhumika nibhaayi hai? Tusi koi izzat rehn nai ditti.”

BJP leader Shailee Khanna offered a ‘topi’ (cap) to mayor. In a sarcastic attack on the mayor, she said, ‘Main sareya vallo tuhanu topi dena chahungi, kyunki tusi panj saal baakiya nu topi pvaai hai’.

Congress councillor Onkar Tikka also made a remark on mayor, ‘The Congress party is losing Jalandhar MC this time and you are responsible for the same.’

Another councillor Davinder Rony said, ‘Tusi Jalandhar nu number 1 bana ditta, par thallo di.’ Even if some voices wanted to defend the mayor, others raised theirs, to snub them. However, Councillor Nirmal Singh Nimma from Ward No. 6 councillor said, “Even when a government employee gets retired, he/she is given a warm goodbye, the mayor did manage to work on several issues before all the Smart City projects chaos. So, we should be respectful enough to say goodbye in a nice manner.

Sewerage issues dominate

There was not even a single councillor who did not raise the issue of the deplorable situation of the sewerage system in the city. During the zero hour, councillors told their problems to MC Commissioner Abhijeet Kaplish which he tried to address.

Since it was his first General Gouse meeting after he assumed the charge as MC Commissioner, Kaplish addressed the councillors when the meeting commenced. After he finished, the councillors took out a point of his introductory speech in which the commissioner mentioned that MC was having ‘enough funds’ and quipped that if the civic body had funds, then why no developmental works were being done?

“Around 25-30 youngsters who repair the damaged streetlights have not been given their salaries for months and you say that corporation has funds,” said Davinder Rony.

Councillors Shweta Dhir, Sarfo Devi, Onkar Tikka, Sushil Kumar, Anjali Bhagat, and several others raised sewerage issues and dark areas due to non-working street lights related to their wards.