Residents approach CM for completion of Nurmahal police station building
Nurmahal residents have approached Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann for seeking immediate intervention for completion the construction of the police station building. Dilbag Singh, a social activist, and a resident of Bainapur village, has sent a representation to the CM which stated that in the year 2006, the Nurmahal police station was functioning from a private building.
Nurmahal residents donated six kanals and 18 marlas of land from the village for the construction of the police station building. Besides, they contributed Rs 25 lakh towards the construction of the building. Despite these efforts, the project remained incomplete due to bureaucratic delays, primarily inability to transfer the land title to the Police Department.
The police station land was legally mutated in the name of common owners. However, the Police Department was yet to finalise the land transfer, which hindered construction of the building.
In 2012, the Nurmahal Nagar Council passed a unanimous resolution to transfer land to the Police Department for this purpose. Despite this, the resolution was rejected by the Director, Local Government, and no further action was taken by successive state governments under Chief Ministers Parkash Singh Badal, Capt Amarinder Singh, Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, Charanjit Singh Channi and Bhagwant Mann.|
A local social worker filed a writ petition in the high court in 2012 demanding that the authorities concerned be asked to issue notification under Sections 4 and 6 of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, to acquire the land. The then acting Chief Justice Jasbir Singh and Justice Rakesh Kumar Jain dismissed the petition.
The delay has left the police station in dire need for essential infrastructure, including barracks for officials, boundary walls, flooring and parking spaces for impounded vehicles. Residents have been making repeated requests to the state government to approve the land transfer and allow completion of the police station building, but their pleas have so far gone unanswered.