Urban News

The state government has sought a report from the Kharar Municipal Council (MC) in the alleged scam involving the construction of a state-of-the-art sports stadium in the town.

Newsline had reported on July 25 that a sum of Rs 1 crore has been shown as spent to develop Kharar’s first-ever stadium at an eight acre site earmarked for it but there was nothing on ground to suggest any ongoing work.

Planning to spend another Rs 2 crore on the project, the civic body, during its meeting on July 14, had claimed that a tower of high-tension power supply lines installed recently by Punjab State Power Corporation Limited in the plot has rendered the stadium useless.

Taking cognisance of the matter, Director, Local Government (DLG), Punjab, S K Sharma has asked the MC Executive Officer to peruse the case for getting the tower shifted from the stadium plot and send a detailed report to his office so that the case could be discussed at the government level as well.

Though the civic body claims that the tower has been erected in the middle of a 400-metre athletic track, no such track is visible at the site.

The plot, surrounded by pools of dirty stagnant water and heaps of garbage, has neither any approach road nor any boundary wall as yet. The ground is neither levelled nor marked for any type of sports. Besides, an open drain passes through the ground. The filthy conditions promote insect breeding and the place is full of mosquitoes, flies amid foul smell. 

At the MC meeting, a resolution was adopted to ask the Power Corporation to shift the tower, which has rendered the stadium useless and the expenditure of Rs 1 crore, including Rs 36 lakh from government grants, is going down the drain.

Power Corporation Senior Executive Engineer P S Bains, meanwhile, has accused the MC of raising no objections on the draft notification of the tower line alignment made in 2006, following which it was approved and now no alteration can be made.