JAMMU : The residents of Tawi Vihar Sidhra in the outskirts of the Jammu City today sought the intervention of the Provincial President National Conference and former MLA Nagrota Assembly Constituency Devender Singh Rana in getting revoked, what they called illegal and unethical, sale of the colony based cooperative school.
The residents have already taken up the issue with Lt Governor G. C Murmu and the other concerned authorities.
At the invitation of the residents, Rana, accompanied by the JMC Corporator Sidhra Mrs Shama Akhtar, visited the colony and listened to the issues raised by their representatives. Among others, present on the occasion were prominent residents of the colony including Brig (Retd) M.M Gupta, D.K Sharma, Pritam Singh, Vikrant Kapoor, Angrez Singh, Mr Omar Ganai, M. K Dhar, Mr Shiv Kumar Jamwal and Mr S. K Gupta.
“What was essentially a facility for the children of the colony will now remain open for children from across the city thus entailing lot of activity, including plying of buses to pick and drop the students thus causing environmental hazard in an exclusive residential colony”, one of the representatives said, adding that that the sale deed is in gross violation of the by-laws of the J&K Cooperative Housing Corporation Limited, a duly registered company.
The residents alleged that subletting of the premises and the state land has taken place in gross violation of norms. The deal being purely commercial in nature is flawed as no requisite formalities in terms of no objection certificates from the Irrigation and Flood Control Department, Jammu Development Authority, Jammu Municipal Corporation etc have been obtained. They said that subletting of the premises is also against the explicit understanding with the residents at the time of allotment of plots that the colony will have no commercial activity and shall remain environmentally friendly.
Rana said that such sensitive issues needed to be resolved in a spirit of cooperativeism, the very idea behind the laying of the colony years ago, and any arbitrary move will only heighten the tensions. He said the issue is already required to be discussed with all the stakeholders to arrive at consensus. If the majority of the residents don’t want the facility in the area, their wishes should be respected as a confrontational attitude is against the spirit of cooperative movement. He asked the residents to collectively highlight the issue before concerned forums for an amicable solution.
