Patiala MC, police remove shanties from Mall road
SHUNTED OUT? MC official says 100 homeless people were taken to railway station, asked to leave city, however, mayor issues press release that people were taken to night shelters
UPROOTED Around 100 homeless people, including women and children, were taken to railway station and asked to leave the city
The municipal corporation (MC) of Patiala and police removed shanties of homeless people from Mall road in Patiala. On Monday, teams of MC officials and police reportedly took around 100 homeless people to the city railway station and asked them to leave the city.
The MC had built three temporary night shelters with an objective of offering shelter to the homeless, however, the project failed as the homeless expressed their unwillingness to go to the shelters.
Consequently, the team of inspectors of the civic body, cops traffic police started a drive to remove shanties of the homeless from the roadsides, starting from the Mall road in Patiala. They started the drive at around 10:45am.
Confirming the development, inspector Naresh Kumar of land and advertisement branch of the MC, said, “Inspectors Ravinder Singh and Sunil Gulati, police post in-charge Gopal Krishan, traffic in-charge Ranjeet Singh and I, along with a team of officials launched the drive on directions of the MC commissioner and mayor.”
“The Swachh Bharat mission is on and these people living on the footpaths are destroying the beauty of the Royal City. They had constructed shanties and we had been receiving complaints from the PWD office that their presence is causing inconvenience in their work,” he added.
“Mall road is one of the main city roads. These people are spoiling the city’s view by building shanties on footpath. To add to the troubles, the beggars are unwilling to stay at night shelters,” the inspector said.
“So, we took around 100 homeless people, including women and children, to the city railway station and asked them to leave the city. We have also spoken to the station master and he allowed them to sit in Ambala-bound trains,” he added.
After launching the drive, the MC issued a press release which was contradictory to the situation.
Mayor Sanjeev Sharma Bittu, in the press release, said, “We have made separate arrangements for homeless males and females at temporary night shelters. On Monday, the MC teams, with the help of traffic police and cops, brought more than 100 people, who were staying on footpaths into the night shelters.”
MC commissioner Poonamdeep Kaur said, “On Monday, we initiated the drive to remove illegal and unauthorised encroachments from city. The ones who boarded the train might have been from outside Patiala. But I will look into the matter.”
“We are trying hard to send homeless people into night shelters but they are not willing to stay there. Earlier, nobody was staying on footpaths on Mall road. These people had come into the city just two month back,” she added.