Villagers vent ire before PPCB panel

The event acquired political overtones with the presence of Congress MLA from Kharar,Balbir Sidhu,former Punjab Assembly Deputy Speaker Bir Devinder Singh,former Punjab Minister Jagmohan Singh Kang,AICC member Lakhwinder Kaur Garcha and BJP district president Khushwant Rai.

Supporting the villagers,the political leaders vowed to launch a massive public agitation to stop the dumping of garbage in these villages. “We will oppose tooth and nail any move to establish the project against public wishes,” they collectively declared.

Hundreds of villagers,including sarpanches and panches of several villages,gathered at Government Senior Secondary School,Jhanjeri,much before PPCB officials arrived at 11.30 am. Tight security arrangements were made to avert any untoward incident.

The villagers,led by JAC chairperson Paramjeet Kaur and BKU (Ekta) state vice-president Mehar Singh Thheri,registered a strong protest before the PPCB officials and made it clear that they would not allow forcible acquisition of the land. However,several landowners expressed their willingness to give their land for the project,if they were paid compensation in accordance with the current market price.

PPCB Superintending Engineers Pawan Garg,Simarjeet Goel,Executive Engineer Nazar Singh,Local Government Chief Engineer Manmohan Singh,Mohali ADC Jaspal Mittal,GMADA ACA Balwinder Singh Multani and District Town Planner Gurpreet Singh had a tough time pacifying the villagers,who remained adamant on their objections.

Meanwhile,GMADA Chief Administrator (CA) Vivek Partap Singh assured special benefits to the area,if the project was allowed to be established. Assuring that the project will have no negative fallout,Singh said,“The development of villages where the project is to come up will be taken up on a priority basis and the road network will be upgraded as well to cope with the increased traffic due to the project.”

The GMADA is planning to acquire 58.79 acres spread across Rasanheri,Jhanjeri and Swara villages to dump estimated 80 tonnes of untreated garbage and solid waste generated from Mohali’s population of 2.5 lakh daily.

Up in arms against the project,the villagers had staged a protest in front of the GMADA office in December while Congress leader Lakhwinder Kaur Garcha had sought high-level probe into the stakeholders of the land under acquisition,which she alleged was recently purchased by certain influential persons to gain high dividends.