Abohar, October 9
The Abohar Improvement Trust had in 1982 launched a scheme to develop a residential colony with 20 plots in the Nai Abadi area. It was mandatory for the allottees to complete the construction within three years, but due to gross neglect, houses are yet to be constructed on 25 per cent of the plots, a resident said.
The residents have welcomed the reported move to merge the financially unviable Trust, which is among the nine Trusts to be wound up in the first phase, with the civic body. The government reportedly plans to dissolve 20 such Trusts that are known as “white elephants”. They are to be merged with municipalities.
During the Akali-BJP government, many plots were confiscated and re-auctioned, but most of the successful bidders neither paid their instalments nor completed the construction work. Akhil Bharatiya Grahak Panchayat state secretary Ashok Garg said in 2011, some Akali leaders had laid the foundation stone for the construction of roads in the colony, but even after 11 years, Nai Abadi residents were stuck with pathetic roads.
The Municipal Corporation saw the people’s plight and got the roads constructed. Even shopkeepers of the Maharana Pratap market, developed by the Trust, have been suffering.
Sources privy to the developments said the Congress government led by Capt Amarinder Singh had in 2018 decided to dissolve a dozen Trusts, which were going through a financial crisis, and merge them with the municipalities, but the then Local Government Minister, Navjot Singh Sidhu, had supposedly withheld his nod.
His successor did not clear the proposal as Congress workers were to be accommodated in the unviable Trusts, the sources said. In Abohar, the chairman and members of the Trust were appointed a few months ahead of the 2022 Assembly poll.
During the Akali-BJP government, under the alleged pressure of a senior BJP leader from Fazilka, Rs 4.5 crore was transferred from the Abohar Trust to Fazilka, a promise was made to return the money with interest, but it was not done.
For the past few years, staff from the Bathinda Improvement Trust had been visiting Abohar once a week to look after the administrative work.
The Trust neither has any source of income nor any regular staff members. Its merger would be a big relief to commercial markets and the maiden colony, said
the residents.
