Pune civic officials beaten up for favouring transporter

Two officers of Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) were beaten up by angry citizens in the ante-chamber of the standing committee chairman’s office on Tuesday.

They faced the wrath of people for allegedly failing to remove encroachment on public space by a local transporter, who is also issuing threats to residents.

When standing committee chairman Ganesh Bidkar was briefing reporters about the meeting of the committee on Tuesday, suddenly there was the sound of a slap from the adjoining ante-chamber. Reporters found citizens beating up two engineers of the PMC. Bidkar had to calm the angry crowd that had filled the room and diffuse the situation.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA from Parvati constituency, Madhuri Misal, was present.

Some residents of Akshay Cooperative Housing Society in Tavare Colony, Parvati, had come to the PMC to file their complaint.

One of the residents, who was too scared to reveal his identity, said the transporter, Shantilal Raval, had issued death threats to him and his sons if they tried to approach the PMC. He said that Raval has illegally occupied an open space of 11, 870 square feet in the housing society area, which is an amenity space to be acquired by the PMC, for the past 22 years.

He said that requests to civic authorities to remove the encroachment and acquire the land are falling on deaf ears.

“When additional city engineer Vivek Kharvadkar had passed an order on April 6, 2011 to take action on the issue, the letter to be sent to the municipal commissioner for final approval was delayed for two months. Meanwhile, the transporter’s lawyer approached the court and got a ‘status quo’ order on the the land,” he said.

Apart from living in fear, the residents of the housing society have to daily bear the noisy movement of heavy trucks. An aggrieved resident alleged that one senior woman had also died in an accident involving one of the transporter’s trucks.

When Misal had raised the issue in the legislative assembly, she was told by chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, who holds the portfolio of urban development, that there is a court stay order on acquiring the land.

Misal said on Tuesday that the officers failed to produce a copy of the stay order.

“The civic officials faced people’s ire as the former and the police were hand in glove with the transporter. The PMC officers have become so defiant that they have given wrong information to the chief minister,” she said.