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Put them on right track

THIS must take the cake as far as apathy of the administration is concerned. After decades of petitions, villagers have even donated private land to the government so that it may build a metalled road connecting their Tanda village in Ropar to the main Purkhali-Bardar road.

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THIS must take the cake as far as apathy of the administration is concerned. After decades of petitions, villagers have even donated private land to the government so that it may build a metalled road connecting their Tanda village in Ropar to the main Purkhali-Bardar road. But no, the file is stuck in the pothole of red tape. The PWD and Rural Development and Panchayat Department are yet to negotiate their ways through land transfer and land swap formalities. Who cares if the poor villagers feel ditched or have to suffer yet another year of the dirt track that turns into slush during the monsoons? Oblivious to Tanda’s plight — schoolchildren navigating the choe-flooded path with ropes, patients trapped home for lack of connectivity — politicians and officials proudly zip by on the multi-laned express highway nearby. Many among them would be patting themselves on the back for putting Punjab on the path of ‘progress’. Tanda alone pushes us miles behind in development. 

Big projects, too, are a bumpy ride. There are roadblocks on the big flyover project not too far from Tanda that have been giving nightmares to people equal to many Tandas every day. The Punjab Government must clear the bottlenecks related to land acquisition that have slowed the pace of work on the Kharar-Ludhiana four-laning highway project. The Kharar-Landran flyover, a vital link from Chandigarh to Punjab and Himachal Pradesh which was to facilitate the smooth movement of nearly 20,000 vehicles that cross it daily by March this year, is nowhere near completion. Rather, work is halted and the overhead road ends in a precipitous drop. 

Unless the hurdles are removed urgently, work is likely to miss many more deadlines, besides costing the state dear as prices of men and material escalate exponentially. Already battling a fund crunch, Punjab can ill afford such a colossal loss. Perhaps, holding the officials to account for the delay in the road project and its subsequent price rise would put the work on the right track. 

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