Canal land in Faridabad freed from encroachment

Bijendra Ahlawat

Tribune News Service

Faridabad, September 15

The Irrigation Department recovered about four acres of land encroached upon in neighboring Sector 4 and Ballabgarh city here on Tuesday.

This was the second demolition drive in the past 24 hours as the Municipal Corporation, Faridabad, razed around 1,200 unauthorised residential constructions located on its land in Lakkadpur-Khori village on Monday.

“Bulldozers of the Irrigation Department reached the spot around 11 am and completed the scheduled task by 3.30 pm,” said an official, who claimed that residents of 55 constructions of Patel Nagar had failed to remove the encroachments despite several notices to them. Revealing that these constructions had come up on the banks of the Gurugram canal passing through the city in the past few decades, he said the removal of the encroachments had become necessary as they were posing hurdles in the widening of the national highway and the construction of the service road in the area. He said over two dozen encroachments by shops, sheds and commercial units located on the green belt owned by the department were also removed in the operation on Tuesday.

Notices were served to Patel Nagar residents in February this year also, but the drive got suspended due to the outbreak of Covid pandemic.

Meanwhile, Hari Lal Gupta, president of the Residents’ Welfare Association, Patel Nagar, and Congress party leader Baljit Kaushik, denounced the action, claiming that the eviction of residents from the colony, which was more than 30 years old, was wrong without the provision of alternative accommodation or land.