Akali Dal slams MC, Punjab Govt for non-performance

Our Correspondent

Ludhiana, June 24

The members of Shiromani Akali Dal-Badal (SAD-B) on Monday staged a dharna at Zone-B office of the Municipal Corporation to express their resentment against poor delivery of civic amenities and the failure of the Congress government in the state to fulfil any of its poll promises.

District president of the party and former legislator Ranjit Singh Dhillon and group leader of SAD-B councillors Harbhajan Singh Dang said the civic body had failed to ensure the supply of safe drinking water to many parts of the city and the residents were feeling harassed due to erratic and inadequate water supply.

“At the same time, sewer lines are lying choked and no system seems to be in place for regular cleaning of choked/ overflowing sewers nor is the overall sanitation level anywhere near the acceptable standards. Even though rainy season is at hand, cleaning of open drains and road gullies has not been taken up so far thereby major parts of city are prone to water-logging and being flooded,” the Akali leaders said.

The protesters also flayed the MC administration for its complete failure to tackle the menace of stray dogs in the city. Cases of people, especially children, women and elderly persons, being attacked by packs of stray dogs have assumed alarming proportions, but the MC had apparently failed to come to terms with the problem except for holding meetings and chalking out plans, which mostly remain confined to papers,” they said.

The Youth Akali Dal (YAD) president alleged that the traffic situation in the city had worsened due to the lack of coordination between the MC and the traffic police. Traffic jams had become the order of the day on busy roads and major intersections with the road users left to fend for themselves due to slack enforcement as well as lack of traffic planning and management, he said.

The SAD-B leaders came down heavily on the Congress government in Punjab for repeated hike in power tariff, putting additional burden of taxes on people and inflicting injustice upon the poor in the name of verification of blue cards for the distribution of subsidised atta-dal scheme to BPL (below poverty line) families. The party also expressed serious concern over the deteriorating law and order situation, while observing that the criminals and mafia groups were ruling the roost and the law enforcement machinery had failed to perform.

Prominent among others present were SAD-B legislator Sharanjit Singh Dhillon, Vijay Danav, Gurmeet Singh Kular, Nirmal Singh, Surinder Kaur Dyal, Baba Ajit Singh, Satish Malhotra, Jagbir Singh Sokhey, Sukhdev Singh Gill, Vina Jairath, Mandeep Kaur Sandhu and Kuldeep Singh Khalsa.