Urban News

Indian Express 21.01.2010

MC set for a crackdown on Jawahar camp squatters

After giving repeated warnings to Jawahar camp encroachers, the MC building branch team will finally be going for demolition exercise tomorrow morning in this area. The officers have already sought help from the district police and commando force who will be accompanied by the anti-riot cell to avoid any untoward incident.

Heavy police force will be present at the spot because the team has to demolish 53 shops constructed on the road for which the shopkeepers have already moved Human Rights Commission seeking relaxation. However their case is to come up on January 22, while the authorities have planned demolition a day before.”

According to the assistant town planner, S.S Bindra, “ We have been giving them time for the past one month because they were demolishing on their own. But tomorrow we will act.” The roads will become wider by 10-20 feet after this operation, confirmed the MC team

Indian Express 13.01.2010

Encroachments on NH-21 will be removed soon, says Mohali DC

Also revives plan to construct Kharar bypass

Taking cognizance of the encroachments on the Mohali-Kharar stretch of National Highway-21, which has assumed the distinction of “killer highway” in the view of the large number of road accidents, Mohali Deputy Commissioner Prabhjot Singh Mand has asked the officials of departments concerned to take effective steps to free the highway from encroachment.

In its series on encroachments published recently, the Chandigarh Newsline had highlighted that how temporary and permanent structures have become a common sight on both sides of the highway, which connects Chandigarh with major parts of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.

Chairing a special meeting of the officials here today, the DC directed the district officials of Public Works Department (PWD), Central Works Division and Forest department to act jointly to decide the cases of highway encroachments, which were lying pending in the courts since long, so that all such encroachments existing in the garb of litigation could also be removed

Mand also took serious note of the obstructions delaying the ongoing work to four-lane a stretch of NH-21 from Desumajra to Kharar. While the Forest department officials were asked to remove the trees standing in the way of the project, the Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) authorities were pulled up for delay in shifting the electricity poles and overhead electricity wires existing in the area.

The work to four-lane the 4.14-km NH-21 stretch has been undertaken at a cost of Rs 12.49 crore.

The DC also discussed the plan to revive the construction of a bypass in Kharar to decongest the NH-21 stretch passing through the township. He instructed District Town Planner Gurpreet Singh to prepare the drawings of the bypass project and send it to the state government for approval.

While a 3-km stretch of the highway between Desumajra and Mohali Bridge had been four-laned in 2002, no such work has carried out on the remaining four-km stretch in Kharar. Instead, a bypass was mooted to divert the long-route traffic from Desumajra to Khanpur. However, the project, costing over Rs 30 crore, was shelved after former Kharar MLA Bir Devinder Singh objected to the acquisition of land required for it in 2003.

In November 2006, the state government had again approved a four-lane bypass to decongest the stretch. The revived bypass project, involving approximate expenditure of Rs 120 crore, was planned from Sector 39 in Chandigarh to connect NH-21 near Khanpur village in Kharar municipal limits. The revived bypass was planned to run on a 20-km-long four-laned road.

Taking note of traffic congestion at Kharar bus stand chowk, Mand directed the PWD Central Works Division officials to install traffic lights or make some other arrangement for effective management and free flow of vehicular traffic passing through bus stand chowk in Kharar.