Residents threaten stir against MC move to withdraw claim

“We had faced the brunt of police action for fighting to save our village common land and after much struggle,we were able to force the civic body to stake its claim over the land,which was grabbed by influential persons,” said the villagers,while accusing the MC authorities of “hand-in-glove” with the land “grabbers” for obvious reasons.

They threatened to take on the civic officials and fight tooth and nail to retrieve the land from the clutches of land “grabbers”.

Meanwhile,the Citizens’ Welfare Council has sought the intervention of the Chief Minister and Local Government Minister Manoranjan Kalia and demanded a high-level probe to fix the responsibility of those who moved the agenda item and prevailed upon the councilors to take a decision against the interest of public and civic body. In a representation to Badal and Kalia,the Council chairman Dr Pawan Kumar Jain wrote that besides rejecting the MC resolution adopted to this effect,stern action should be taken against officials concerned,who were responsible for moving such a proposal and then accepting it without considering the interest of MC at all. “The entire case should be thoroughly examined to ascertain on how the civic body lost the cases in lower courts and how the decision to withdraw claim was taken just before the case was scheduled to come up for hearing before an appellant court shortly,” suggested he,while demanding that all efforts should be made to establish MC’s ownership on the land and retrieving its possession.