In a fix: Harried Pearl City residents seek GMADA’s intervention
Members of the Pearl City Mohali Residents’ Welfare Association held a protest outside the Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (GMADA) office on Tuesday, demanding protection of the interests of genuine allottees of plots in Sectors 100 and 104 in Pearls City.
Members of the Pearl City Mohali Residents’ Welfare Association held a protest outside the Greater Mohali Area Development Authority (GMADA) office on Tuesday, demanding protection of the interests of genuine allottees of plots in Sectors 100 and 104 in Pearls City.
Association president Kulbir Singh Sidhu said, “It is unfortunate that GMADA, which is the liaison agency, is not paying attention to our requests. We want GMADA to take over both the sectors, so that our money can be saved. Allottees are facing undue harassment, mental agony and financial loss in the process.”
GMADA additional chief administrator Sukhjeet Pal Singh assured the protesters of taking up their matter with the Punjab government in hope of sorting it out.
Association secretary Jaspal Singh said, “We request the government to instruct GMADA to play an arbitrator between the Lodha Committee and the genuine allottees to realise the pending payments, registration and handing over of plots. We also want GMADA to take over the sectors as per the policy and undertake the pending development.”
Pearls City is a project of Pearls Agrotech Corporation Limited (PACL), under the mega housing project of 2006. It had run into rough weather after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) booked its chairman-cum-managing director, Nirmal Singh Bhangoo, in a ₹45,000 crore Ponzi scam in January 2016.
Currently, the sectors have been attached by the Lodha Committee that is in the process of auctioning them.
Around 160 families reside in both the sectors where people have invested around ₹600 crore. Yet, the sectors do not have a sewerage system, internal roads and streetlights.
Day after protest in Patiala, Pearls group investors booked, 200 held
Patiala: A day after protest at the Gian Sagar Medical College, the police arrested more than 200 investors of the Pearls Agrotech Corporation Limited (PACL) for trespassing, obstructing traffic and beating security men on the college premises on Monday evening. Those arrested have been sent to judicial custody.
The investors were duped in the ₹45,000-crore scam by Pearl Agrotech Corporation Limited (PACL), whose founder Nirmal Singh Bhangoo set up the college. They were threatening to not let the college be taken over by any third party.
The college, which has been shut for the past three months due to non-payment of debt of over ₹100 crore, was recently taken over by BJP leader Swaran Salaria from the Bhangoo family.
Meanwhile, after the day-long protest, the police forcibly evacuated the college premises and arrested the protesters.
A case under several sections, including 283 (danger or obstruction in public way), 186 (obstructing public servant in discharge of public function), 452 (rioting and unlawful assembly), 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty) and 323 (punishment for causing injuries voluntarily) was registered against the protesters.
The investors claimed that the Supreme Court had ordered the Central Bureau of India (CBI) to attach all properties of the PACL and transfer them to the justice RM Lodha-led committee so that it could liquidate them and pay back lakhs of innocent investors.
Mandeep Singh, general secretary of the ‘Insaaf Di Awaaz’ organisation (a body representing duped investors from the region), said they would continue their protest in the coming days and would not allow anyone to take over the college.
“We have invested whatever we had and now the authorities are taking away our democratic right to register protest against the defaulters, who have duped people of thousand crores of rupees,” he said.