A day after local member of parliament Ravneet Singh Bittu accused Ludhiana municipal corporation (MC) officials of passing the buck and refusing to fix responsibility in the Deep Nagar road cave-in incident, a team of top civic body officials on Sunday visited the site to supervise repair work.
Among them were superintendent engineers Rahul Gagneja (building and road branch) and Ravinder Garg (operation and maintenance cell), zonal commissioner Neeraj Jain, and health officer Vipul Malhotra, who oversaw the process to lay a new pipeline.
Congress leader Sushil Raju Thapar, husband of councillor from ward number 83 Indu Thapar, said the digging of road on Sunday has cleared many speculations.
“During the digging, it was found that a 2ft wide and 6ft deep duct, made of interlocking bricks, had eroded. The duct was passing through the road carrying sewage to the Deep Nagar area. Firstly, that duct was laid nearly 60 years ago and had outlived its life and secondly, it may have suffered a crack due to the reckless drilling carried out by telecom companies for laying fibre optic cables,” Sushil said.
He said that now, the entire sewer line was being laid again to avoid any similar incident in future. He also sought a harsher punishment for those digging roads for either pitching tents or laying cables.
{{/usCountry}}He said that now, the entire sewer line was being laid again to avoid any similar incident in future. He also sought a harsher punishment for those digging roads for either pitching tents or laying cables.
{{/usCountry}}“Any digging on the road should be carried out under the supervision of an MC official so that if any eventuality occurs, that official could be held accountable,” Thapar said.
On Saturday, Ludhiana MP Ravneet Singh Bittu had said that he was being made to run from pillar to post to find out who was responsible for the road cave-in at Deep Nagar.
Flustered, Bittu had asked police commissioner Gurpreet Singh Bhullar to file a case against him as being an elected representative, he wanted to take the responsibility of negligence that endangered lives of residents in his constituency.
Bittu, along with local Congress leaders, had visited Deep Nagar to inspect the site.
While expressing regret over the incident, he had said that the road cave-in, wherein two persons were injured, was a serious matter.
He added that following the incident, people were mocking them.
He had demanded the fixing of responsibility and asked the police commissioner to register a case and investigate, so that the culprit could be identified.