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Kuldip Bhatia
Ludhiana, September 25
Residents of Sunet village situated on the periphery of the city held a protest against the authorities of the Ludhiana Improvement Trust (LIT) for what they termed as ‘illegal encroachment’ on a piece of village common land which was allotted to Maha Sabha for the construction of a park and memorial to Shaheed Baba Bhan Singh.
According to activists of the Maha Sabha, who led the protest, the LIT authorities were repeatedly asked not to interfere with the village common land where a stage had been erected for cultural programmes and a park was under development. “Even after giving assurances that they will stay away from this piece of land, the LIT authorities had now demolished the stage and the land around it has also been dug up for reasons best known to the officials,” said Col JS Brar (retd), president, and Jaswant Zeerakh, a functionary of the Maha Sabha.
The protesters said when work had been taken in hand by the LIT at the village common land, they had intimated the police against the unlawful act. On the intervention of the police, work was stopped but now again, digging work had been taken up and extensive damage was caused to plantation and green bed in the park, they alleged.
Even though the villagers went on with the protest against the highhandedness of the LIT officials, burning of effigy of LIT officials was deferred after the Trust Chairman Parminderpal Singh Gill assured the delegation of villagers that any further action on this piece of land would be taken only after demarcation of the said and and verification of revenue record.
Zeerakh said the agitation was put off for the time being and the next course of action would be decided on the basis of action taken by LIT officials. He made it clear that the residents would not take the highhandedness of the officials lying down. He said it was made clear to the LIT Chairman during the meeting that the Trust had no ownership right on the village common land where construction activity was intended to be taken up.
Others present at the occasion were Gurmel Singh Gill, Jagmohan Singh, Kasturi Lal, Vijay Narain, Jarrnail Singh, Satish Sachdeva, Arun Kumar, Ajay Pal, Balwinder Singh, Himmat Singh, Rajwinder Singh, Gallar Chauhan, Avtar Singh Virk, Harpreet Singh, Surinder and Hari Singh Sahni.
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