Amid protests, Adviser orders inquiry

READ: A day ahead of demolition at Dhanas: Residents protest, face lathicharge, tear gas

There are also houses here, which has well-built concrete structure, spread over 4-5 marlas, it is learnt.

Interestingly, the colony came up over the years without any official approval ans it was well under the nose of estate department officers who knew that construction of these houses was in violation of Punjab New Capital (periphery) Control Act, 1952.

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As told by locals, this agriculture land belongs to seven to eight land owners of the Dhanas village who slowly carved out plots on this land from 2002 onwords and allotted to the current residents on some initial sum along with monthly rent.

A resident Satish Kumar said that residents over the years constructed houses over the plots and started living here. According to him, most of the residents also pay monthly rent to the tune of Rs. 600-800 per month to people authorised by landowners.

“Where should we leave this place now, said one of the residents Madan Lal adding that If administration was not in favour of this colony, they should have stopped the construction much earlier. “That time they allowed the construction under influence of land owners and now they says that these houses are illegal. It is injustice to hundreds of families living here,” he said.

Village Sarpanch, Kuljeet Singh Sandhu said that Most of families here belong to labour class and they will be homeless, if administration demolishes their houses. Either they should allow them to stay here, or give them alternative plots of flats its going rehabilitation schemes.

Meanwhile, MP Kirron Kher called UT Administrator Kaptan Singh Solanki and took up today’s incident happened in DC office. Later a delegation led by councillor Satinder Singh met governor on behalf of Kirron Kher and requested him to postpone the drive as holy month of Ramzan was going on. DC SB deepak Kumar said that tomorrow’s eviction was postponed and the entire peripherial issue was being looked in to as per the Chandigarh master plan.

Meanwhile, in the light of today’s incident, the administration would also re-look the entire issue of peripheral area as per the Chandigarh master plan.