Leaders gatecrashing events, Sangrur traders shift venues

Sangrur, November 29

Troubled by gatecrasher politicians, the district industrialists have started organising functions out of Sangrur city. On Saturday night, they hosted Cabinet Minister of Industries and Commerce Gurkirat Singh Kotli at Sunam while three days before this, they had organised a function for Punjab Deputy Chief Minister OP Soni at Dhuri.

Talking to The Tribune, some industrialists said the Sangrur District Industrial Chamber was the best location for district industrialists if they wanted to organise any function. In the past, they had organised majority of functions here but since elections were approaching, Sangrur politicians were vying to take credit without any contribution to the chamber. Recently, when some industrialists were not invited to functions, they tried to create problems. They also started approaching the members of the chamber through officials to get an invitation. “Gatecrasher politicians are the reason for our decision to organise functions out of Sangrur city. Apart from it, we want to promote our block-level units also and give them the experience of organising events,” said Ghanshyam Kansal, district president of the chamber.

During a function at Sunam, chamber chairman AR Sharma raised various demands, including waiver of penalty over house tax and property tax, withdrawal of change of land use condition for new industry and simplification of procedure for the approval of building plans of the industry.

“Since the formation of our government in Punjab, we have been working for the welfare of industry. We have accepted majority of demands while the remaining will be accepted in the coming days,” said Kotli. — TNS