Ludhiana Improvement Trust colony residents move rights panel over ‘unsafe’ City Centre project site

Kuldip Bhatia

Ludhiana, November 11

After having exhausted all sources and failing to evoke any response from the authorities concerned, residents of Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar, a colony developed and maintained by the Ludhiana Improvement Trust (LIT) on Pakhowal Road here, have now moved the Punjab State Human Rights Commission (PSHRC).

The affected residents have sought appropriate directions to the LIT and the state government for saving them from nuisance, safety risk and health hazards, being posed by the ‘abandoned’ City Centre site.

Taking up the complaint, Justice Nirmaljit Kaur and Avinash Kaur, members of the PSHRC had issued a notice of motion to the respondents on September 29, 2021, to submit a detailed report on the issue before the next date of hearing, on January 11, 2022.

Petitioner Arvind Sharma along with other area residents have asserted in their complaint that in the absence of proper maintenance and upkeep, the project site had become highly accident-prone and a permanent source of nuisance in the colony.

The aggrieved residents said in their complaint: “Corrugated iron sheets put up around the project site have been stolen, broken down or corroded. The deep excavation for two levels of basement at the site has led to several road accidents. At two occasions, cars and other four vehicles have skidded down into the dugout area during the rainy season.”

Further, most of the streetlights around the site were non-functional and the abandoned project site had been converted into a garbage dump. To make the matters worse, rainwater from sewer pipes and road gullies was getting drained into the project site, which posed a big health hazard to residents with the potential outbreak of diseases, they said.

The petitioners added that due to massive digging and rainwater or sewer waste accumulating in the deep pit, roads and streets around the project site had caved in a number of times necessitating repair and reconstruction of roads and streets at a heavy expenditure, which could have been avoided with bare minimum upkeep of the site.

The residents wanted directions to the LIT authorities for putting up protective fence or iron sheets around the site, put proper rainwater drainage system in place and take necessary remedial steps to stop the project site from becoming a garbage dumping site.