Indicted officials pick holes in Ludhiana MC report on illegal buildings

Kuldip Bhatia

Ludhiana, April 25

For once, officials of the building branch of the Municipal Corporation (MC), who mostly remain in the line of fire for their acts of omission and commission and rightly or wrongly are blamed for proliferation of illegal buildings in the industrial hub, have picked up the courage to challenge the much-touted report of a senior civic body official about some 57,000 illegal buildings having come up in the city during the period of four years from 2016-17 to 2019-20.

The report was based on number of new electricity connections released by Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) and building plans approved or challans issued to buildings being constructed without approved plans. 

The report of the MC Additional Commissioner and the comments of building branch officials ought to be viewed with an open mind and in an unbiased manner, especially when the department has been facing an acute staff crunch for the last several years. —Official, Municipal Corporation, Ludhiana

The said report had concluded that as against 76,770 connections released by the PSPCL in the city during this period, the building branch had approved 7,467 plans and issued 11,441 challans for illegal constructions. 

In a rebuttal of the said report of the MC building branch through letter No. 141/STP/D dated March 8, 2022, (a copy of which is available with The Tribune), indicted officials had asserted that the facts and figures in the report were distorted, wrong or inflated. Owing to undue publicity given to this report in the media, morale of the field staff and supervisory officials of the building branch had gone down, they added.

Supporting their contention with figures and cross checking of list of new electricity connections, the MC building branch maintained that more than 5,000 electricity connections were shown multiple times in the report, 9,376 connections were released in colonies lying out of the MC limits and 5,249 connections were provided to properties located in illegal colonies, which were later compounded by the MC.

“Further, 2,660 connections have been released to colonies of the Ludhiana Improvement Trust, GLADA, Housefed or those under the control of the Mandi Board and the Industries Department. Besides, 3,920 power connections have been given to slum dwellers rehabilitated in one room tenements under centrally-sponsored ‘basic services to the urban poor’ (BSUP) scheme,” claimed officials of the MC. 

Practically, the claims of the building branch officials, if taken at face value, had taken the wind out of sails of the ‘damaging report’ on the basis of which several serving and transferred officials of the building branch, who were posted here during the period of report 2016-17 to 2019-20, were issued charge sheets.

An MC official, closely associated with all the related developments, expressed confidence that both the report of the MC Additional Commissioner and the comments made by building branch officials thereon ought to be viewed with an open mind and in an un-biased manner, especially when the building branch was facing acute staff crunch for the last several years. 

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