The Pioneer 25.11.2010
Illegal religious structures encroach Panchkula roadsGeetika Thakur | Chandigarh
Putting an end to the blatant destruction of the planned city and its further planned growth by increasing religious encroachments, city administration made it a matter of priority and succeeded to remove six such major religious encroachments from the city.
Getting along with the efforts of Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA), city’s Deputy Commissioner (DC) Ashima Brar has achieved to boost up HUDA’s anti-encroachment drive in the area and remove six such encroachments which have defaced the city.
The mushrooming of illegal religious structures in the city has always been an annoying factor for denizens and even administration. The city is having 29 such religious encroachments in all at various areas which have always been a bone of contention.
Panchkula Deputy Commissioner Ashima Brar said: “There are a total of 29 such encroachments and we have been working on all the cases since long minutely in order to decide which need quick removal and which all can be relocated or can be regularised. Where six have been removed, we are all ready to remove other three soon.”
“The administration and HUDA always faced problems due to illegal religious encroachments but had to handle it with care due to the religious factor attached to it. But we also started getting numerous complaints from the residents regarding inconvenience faced by them due to these religious structures,” she added.
She shared that the district administration had been conducting meetings with all the concerned departments whose lands had been encroached by these religious bodies. The work on these reports has been completed and policies are being framed by all the departments to deal with these illegal religious structures.
Earlier, a committee was also formed by the administration especially to look into the matter concerning removal, regularisation and reallocation of these 29 religious structures. The report was given by this committee through and after that decision has been taken to remove six such structures.
“The only work which is left is to be decided which structures need to be regularised and which need to be relocated. The rest 20 structures will either be relocated or regularised on early basis. The decision in this regard will be out very soon,” added Brar.
All this is the result of last year’s Supreme Court’s orders on September 29 has banned illegal religious structures on public land. This puts the onus of preventing new unauthorized construction on public land on the chief secretaries of states and union territories.
Following which, the state government stated that they will be dealing on a case to case basis to do justice to each case but gave an affidavit that such fresh constructions will be prevented and district magistrates will be responsible.
With no religious structure earlier, a mazaar near Zirakpur-Panchkula barrier came up in a few months and with time they initially made a boundary fence and then erected a tin roof where a priest sits all the time.
HUDA had woke up after the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) had demolished five illegal religious structures on NH-73 from Panchkula to Yamunanagar and on NH-21 from Panchkula to Kalka recently.
