With election year approaching, MLAs worried over pending development works

Ludhiana: With election year approaching fast, Congress MLAs are worried about the development works in their respective wards of the constituencies and pressure is now building up on the civic body officials as well. The Congress MLAs are conducting meetings with the mayor and officials concerned to speed up the development works.
But this has irked the councillors of Shiromani Akali Dal and BJP, who claimed that the ruling party MLAs were having meetings with the mayor, Balkar Sandhu, who was not thinking about works in their wards, and that is why no house meeting was being called up despite several requests.
On Thursday, Congress MLA Surinder Dawar from central constituency conducted a meeting with the mayor and MC commissioner, along with other officials, at the mayor camp office. The main purpose of the meeting was to pull up officials for delay in the ongoing development works, especially the road works. The councillors from central constituency raised their issues and asked for a speedy solution.
Dawar also asked the officials to take action against those contractors who did not start the work despite several reminders. The mayor, however, assured the MLA and councillors that there would be no problem in the development works and by next week one meeting of finance and contracts committee (F&CC) would also take place for giving sanction to the pending work orders.
The Congress MLA further said, “The major issues were about pending road works, sewerage choking, streetlights and sewerage manhole lids. The officials were pulled up for unnecessary delay in the work.” He said he would again call a meeting next month for taking progress report because election year is about to come and they will have to complete the pending works.
Meanwhile, the mayor said the development works would not stop and officials were told to either perform or get shifted to some other city. He said by next week he would call an F&CC meeting and after that even a house meeting would also be planned.
The leader of opposition and SAD councillor, Harbhajan Dang, said, “We are fed up of requesting the mayor for house meetings as he is not listening. Their councillors come and conduct the meetings with the help of ruling party MLAs and their works are taking place at a fast pace, but what about other wards.” He said they would now discuss the issue in detail with fellow councillors and give one week ultimatum to the mayor for the meeting or else they would sit on protest.
Meanwhile, the leader of BJP councillors, Sunita Rani, said, “If we ask for a meeting, then the mayor is reminded of coronavirus and social distancing but when their own party MLAs conduct meetings nobody even wears mask and nobody is bothered about precautions.” He said the mayor should either call councillors from other parties for development works or there should be a proper house meeting.
Uproar over missing sewerage manhole lids
Congress councillor from ward number 20 Navneet Singh complained in the meeting that for the past 20 days he had been demanding some sewerage manhole lids, which were missing, as this could lead to some incident. He said earlier the officials concerned denied having stock and when the stock arrived the employees demanded Rs 1,000 per manhole lid. He said he had demanded action against the employee who had done this blunder and the MC commissioner had also asked for strict action against that employee.