Ludhiana: ‘If roads at textile cluster not fixed, we won’t pay taxes’

LUDHIANA: Irked over the poor condition of roads, especially Bahadur K Road, the members of Bahadur ke Textile and Knitwear Association have announced that they will not pay any kind of taxes to the civic body if the road construction work does not start immediately. They said despite several requests to the officials for road construction, nothing concrete has been done so far.
Textile industrialists announced that they will protest outside Zone A municipal corporation (MC) office on Monday and also threatened to put boards in the area that they would not pay tax to the civic body and elected representatives will not be allowed to enter the area.
The members conducted a press conference on Saturday and claimed that for more than a month, the association has been requesting for the repair of roads to MLAs Madan Lal Bagga and Daljit Grewal as well as requested commissioner of municipal corporation, Shena Aggarwal.
The area has more than 500 textile and allied industry units making it the biggest textile manufacturing hub of Punjab. The annual turnover of the textile cluster is more than Rs 10,000 crore and all the industrial units pay huge amounts of tax which should be, claimed the members of the association, used for the maintenance and upkeep of this area .
The industry has mutually resolved that in case the road reconstruction is not commenced immediately, the industry will not pay any more taxes and will not allow the officials to enter the area.