Irked over the pothole-riddled Bahadur Ke road and the failure of municipal corporation (MC) in taking up road reconstruction work, the industrialists, under the banner of Bahadur Ke Textile and Knitwear Association, on Saturday announced to stop paying taxes to the civic body. Further, they announced to commence road construction work by themselves from Monday, in case immediate steps are not taken up by the MC.
Raising the slogan ‘No development, No tax’, during a press conference in the area on Saturday, a group of industrialists, led by president Tarun Jain Bawa, said repeated complaints have been submitted with the MC officials and MLAs Madan Lal Bagga (Ludhiana North) and Daljit Singh Bhola Grewal (Ludhiana East) in the last one month, but to no avail.
Ruing the deep potholes on the entire stretch of the road, they said accidents too take place, but the authorities are turning a blind eye towards the problem.
Bawa said over 500 textile and allied industry units are situated on the road with an annual turnover of over ₹10,000-crore. Hefty taxes are also being paid to the civic body, but the area, which is the hub of textile industry, is still being ignored by the civic body.
“ We have decided not to pay taxes to the MC and commence road construction work by ourselves from Monday, in case immediate steps are not taken up by the MC to reconstruct the road. It has been over a month that we have been asking the authorities to start road reconstruction work. Why should we pay hefty taxes like property tax, water-sewer user charges etc, if the authorities do not want to take up development works in our area?” Bawa said.
{{/usCountry}}“ We have decided not to pay taxes to the MC and commence road construction work by ourselves from Monday, in case immediate steps are not taken up by the MC to reconstruct the road. It has been over a month that we have been asking the authorities to start road reconstruction work. Why should we pay hefty taxes like property tax, water-sewer user charges etc, if the authorities do not want to take up development works in our area?” Bawa said.
{{/usCountry}}Bawa further said industrialists, along with labourers, will also stage a protest outside the MC’s headquarters (MC Zone-A office) over the issue on July 11.
Meanwhile, MC superintending engineer Tirath Bansal said the contract to reconstruct the road at a cost of around ₹1-crore has been allotted since November last year. “The work could not be started at that time due to cold weather conditions as the road had to be constructed during night hours because of heavy movement of traffic on the stretch,” he said, adding that after that the contractor commenced the work in some other area and did not deploy machinery on Bahadur Ke road.
The department is looking into the issue and efforts are being made to commence the reconstruction work on Monday, if the weather conditions remain favourable and there is no rainfall. he added.