Recover lease dues from 5 institutions, NGO asks MC commissioner

Ludhiana: Members of an NGO, Team Yuva, and smart citizens of Ludhiana met the municipal corporation commissioner K P Brar on Wednesday over the issue of recovery of pending lease amount from five big institutions of the city. They asked the commissioner why the civic body did not revise the lease amount of these institutions when no charity was being done by the same. The commissioner, however, claimed that they had already sought lease documents from these institutions and only after that they would take suitable action.
The MC had allotted some of the prime chunks of land to some of the educational and charitable institutions at a very low rate. An example of this, Arya College was given 5 acres for just Re 1 per annum, KVM School was given 5 acres at Rs 250 per annum, Dharam Sewa Trust, Jawahar Nagar camp, was allocated land at Rs 1,084 per annum, Sri Krishna Charitable Hospital, Model Town, was given 2 acres for just Rs 173 per annum and Khalsa Education College allotted 2 acres for Rs 200 per annum. In the MC general house meeting on February 4, 2019, the officials had proposed to increase the lease amount, but there was no conclusion on the issue.
The matter, however, again came to light when during a third party audit by Grand Thornton company it was mentioned in its report that lease agreements of these five institutions were missing from the MC records. After this was highlighted in the report, additional commissioner Rishipal asked the staff to locate the files, but till now they have not been able to trace the files. So, now they have asked the institutions to bring their documents. Only Dharam Sewa Trust of Jawahar Nagar camp has brought the agreement while the rest are still seeking time.
The members of the NGO pleaded with the commissioner to bring revenue from these resources so that the more development of the city could take place. Kumar Gaurav from Team Yuva said he had kept the matter before the MC commissioner and she had assured him of taking action against these institutions. He said they also raised the matter of missing zebra crossings and road markings from city roads and claimed that they would get zebra crossing painted at six places in the city soon, where e-challaning has been introduced while at other locations the civic body should do the same.