Ludhiana Municipal Corporation proposes to convert five residential roads to commercial
Manav Mander
Tribune News Service
Ludhiana, August 12
The Municipal Corporation, Ludhiana, has proposed to convert five residential roads into commercial ones. These include Barewal Road, Main Tibba Road, Chandigarh Road to Bhamian Road, Magnet Resort road and Barewal Canal to culvert of Sua Road of Barewal Awana village.
The MC has sought objections for the same and responding to it, the Council of Engineers said the surrounding areas had been developed as unplanned areas with less parks and green belts, already resulting into major damage to the environment. Hence, the conversion of the residential roads into commercial ones would lead to further damage to the environment.
“With the conversion of the residential roads to commercial, multi-storey buildings will come up in the area, resulting in major increase in load on infrastructure and the environment. The MC is going to increase burden on basic infrastructure that will lead to further degradation of the environment,” said Kapil Arora from the council.
Instead of increasing the green cover of Ludhiana, the civic body is keen to damage the environment by increasing the load on existing infrastructure by allowing illegal activities under its nose. It is pertinent to mention here that minimum 8 per cent of the area of a residential society is required to be left under parks and around 32 per cent for roads and other infrastructure but such green areas and other infrastructure in the locality are negligible, said another city resident.
Arora said the corporation had approved commercial maps of some buildings on Barewal Road (Zone-D), including one hospital and small boutiques too, which is a matter of investigation as when the road was not commercial, how such maps of buildings have been approved by the officials concerned?
Shikha Gupta, a resident of Aggar Nagar, said Barewal Road was already congested and several commercial activities are taking place there. “I wonder that the MC is planning to convert it to commercial now. The road is already congested and witnesses traffic snarls and things will only worsen after the road being declared commercial,” she said.
At Barewal Canal to culvert of Sua Road of Barewal Awana (Zone D) village, the corporation has approved commercial map of one building on the road (junction of Sidhwan Canal-Sua Road) which has encroached upon the land of the Irrigation Department. It is also a matter of investigation as when the Road was not commercial, how such maps of commercial buildings had been approved by the officials concerned, said another member of the Council of Engineers.
