Finally, LDA acts bold, gets 76 out!

HAVE YOU ever seen a police outpost being sealed by none other than the men in khaki themselves? Well, what else can one expect when those whose duty it is to enforce law themselves become the law- breakers.

HAVE YOU ever seen a police outpost being sealed by none other than the men in khaki themselves?

HT Image

Well, what else can one expect when those whose duty it is to enforce law themselves become the law- breakers.

And this is precisely what happened on Tuesday when the LDA was finally able to muster enough courage to take on the illegally ensconced baddies in the Nehru Enclave. But more than the students’ mafia that had holed up inside these flats, the LDA officials had a tough time, getting the premises vacated from the clutches of the police personnel.

Armed with a list of 79 illegal occupants and accompanied by a posse of policemen, members of the LDA enforcement squad comprising executive engineer Durgesh Srivastava and property officer KK Singh reached the colony at around 11.30 am.

The eviction drive that started on a dull note by reluctant officials warmed up only after members of the fourth estate arrived on the scene. After ejecting around half-a-dozen flat-grabbers, the LDA team moved towards the two-room category flats that form the Pushpayan block of the colony. Things were moving pretty smoothly till the officials reached flat number P – 218. The operation came to a grinding halt and a murmur went around.

A signboard on the flat that was locked read “Police Chowki Vishwas Khand, Gomti Nagar.” Unable to decide the next course of action, the officials turned towards the beat’s sub-inspector RK Bharti, who was quick to distance himself from the issue. “I don’t know who lives in the flat and I have got nothing to do with it,” Bharti replied when asked by HT Lucknow Live about the presence of the so-called police outpost. Finally, after a telephonic conversation with the area’s Station Officer RS Yadav, who admitted that the house in question was in the possession of his ‘men’ in the force, the lock was broken and the LDA officials sealed the flat.

The story was no different at P- 95 and P-251. While the former flaunted the name of one Najmul Bari of the UP Police, the latter had a nameplate of Ekta Tyagi, a woman sub-inspector. At the end of the day-long operation, the LDA team managed to evict encroachers from 76 flats leaving three under the illegal occupation of the PAC men. LDA Vice Chairman BB Singh when contacted said that a notice would soon be put out inviting applications against these vacated flats that would be allotted on first-come-first-serve basis.