The District Magistrate of Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal, Rajendra Pensia, visited the contentious Shahi Jama Masjid area and ordered the removal of any encroachments on roads, sewers, water bodies, etc.
The Sambhal DM said that multiple encroachments are being seen around the Shahi Jama Masjid area on paper.
“There was encroachment happening on the roads, sewers, water bodies, and that too for a long time. Under that, we are taking it as an ‘abhiyan’ to fix that. We launched a campaign in Chandausi and we had decided that we would start the campaign in November but due to some reason we could not start,” DM Pensia told ANI.
The Sambhal area had violent clashes as people protested the court-mandated Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) examination of the mosque. The violence resulted in four deaths and multiple injuries among police personnel and locals.
The Sambhal DM, while talking about the campaign of cleaning the area, said that the campaign to stop encroachments will be going on for three months.
“The campaign will continue for two to three months and any infringement will be demolished. On the papers, it is also shown that there is encroachment near Shahi Jama Masjid. We are cleaning that place too and after that we will see what it is recorded in. Now there is a water body there, it is said that there is a well, so we will revive it,” Pensia said.
Pensia also mentioned that month after month, there have been FIRs registered on encroachments and electricity theft, with a total of 1221 FIRs registered since September.
“We started a big campaign from the first week of September because the power department had no accessibility in most areas of Sambhal, so when we started in September, we registered 206 FIRs. In November, we had registered 689 FIRs. During the three months, we have registered around 1221 FIRs,” he said.
He further mentioned the plan to put armoured wire around to stop electricity theft.
The DM added, “When we put armoured wires around, we are expecting to save around 13-15 crores in different Tehsils. Our goal is to stop electricity theft. We have ordered around 20 km of armoured wires, we will put them around the area which will reduce the risk of electricity theft. Moreover, the line will not get overloaded, as before the transformer used to get blown up. After this, people will only be paying what they use.”
The Sambhal administration has been cracking down on various illegal activities in the area. On December 9, police conducted various raids at 13 places and seized firearms and narcotics.
On December 12, the electricity department carried out bulldozer action on encroachments in the district, saying that electricity theft had been happening there.
(With inputs from ANI)
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