Strong hold of Congress, Patiala (urban) segment neglected by SAD

Tuesday, 29/11/2016

http://epaper.dailypostindia.com/Details.aspx?id=168902&boxid=59134&uid=&dat=2016-11-29

Patiala : The Patiala (Urban) constituency has remained with the Congress for 5 decades but it is faced by a number of problems.

The major problem is that of choked sewerage. The reason for choking is the existence of dairies in the city’. The animal dung blocks the system. Otherwise also the constituency suffered an over-all neglect.

There is no truth in the claims of the municipal corporation which pats its back for one and all achievement.

Poor sanitation, encroachments, water logging and broken roads are the other problems faced by the people. The public resentment has been resulting in protest dharna but it has become the habit of authorities to ignore them.

The people here alleged that favouritism and nepotism are main yardsticks to carry out developmental works. During the last 10-years when SAD-BJP government was in power the wards with strong Congress presence were ignored.

The constituency is having a total of 1,40,314 registered voters out of which 73,852 are males and 66,462 females.

During the past five decades the Congress Party has won this seat by record Nine Times whereas the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has won it twice. Since 2002 Punjab Congress Chief Amarinder Singh has won this seat by defeating his nearest arch rival of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) Surjit Singh in 2002. Capt. Amarinder Singh defeated another SAD candidate Saroop Singh Sehgal and went to become the Chief Minister of the state. Capt. Amarinder Singh resigned as an MLA from this seat in 2014 when his party asked him to contest the Lok Sabha election from Amritsar Parliamentary seat. Congress’ Preneet Kaur won this seat by defeating SAD’s Bhagwan Dass Juneja.

Because of the Congress factor mainly Capt. Amarinder Singh the ruling SAD adopted a negative view towards the development of this royal city as the constituency confined to it.

The development takes place here only when elections are near. But, during Captain Amarinder’s tenure as Chief Minister it saw development.

The entire sewerage system of this constituency never worked properly and remained choked because of the non- shifting of the dairies from the city to outer designated area.

Jaswinder Singh, a resident of the inner city area, when spoken to, said that during nine years of SAD-BJP rule the present regime did nothing concrete for the people.

Another resident taking a dig over the developmental works, Robin Sharma said that keeping an eye on the forthcoming assembly elections the Municipal Corporation had launched an exercise to re-carpet the roads in respective wards and some roads leading to commercial areas.

He termed such an exercise as wasteful as the relaying roads do not match required quality.

For the last four days the people living in the ward number 41 are facing the problem of poor sanitary conditions. The water supply too was not satisfactory.

Other residents Kamaljit Kaur and Raj Kumar also lamented that the corporation for not providing the better civic amenities to the people of the area. Raj Kumar stated that the condition of roads was in bad shape and nobody was here to take notice of them even though the complaints had been made.

The financial condition of the Municipal Corporation is not too good. It was not getting the adequate funds from the state government and it was said to be on ventilators.

Meanwhile, the ruling SAD workers also accepted that the party leadership was not giving enough care to this constituency as it was considered to be a stronghold of the congress party.