Land grab in Sahakarnagar

Residents of a locality in Sahakarnagar area on Wednesday alleged that a plot of open land has been grabbed by the owner of a transport company.

The residents of housing societies — Akshara, Jeevan Prakash and Digvijay — told reporters that the transporter is using the land for loading and unloading as well as parking trucks used for the evasion of octroi.

“These activities have been causing great inconvenience to local residents,” the aggrieved residents said. But they refused to identity themselves for fear of reprisal by the transporter.

The residents said they took up the issue with the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and requested the officials to acquire the open space as per rules and develop a playground. But the civic body has not yet made its position clear on the issue.

They said the building construction department of the PMC has sent a letter to the municipal commissioner on April 6, 2011 about acquiring the land. “But local activists of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have been pressurising additional municipal commissioner Vivek Kharwadkar not to take action against the transporter,” they alleged.

They said the civic body has denied them access to documents about the issue. Hence, they used the Right to Information (RTI) to seek information about the land. “Even the police department is not coming forward to help local residents,” they said, demanding that that the PMC acquire the land at the earliest.