Agra Commissioner Inspects Vrindavan Project

The commissioner inspects progress, tightens the screws on the heads of the different departments, gives three months to the water department to finish their job. Work on the Iskcon Road has to be finished by the end of June. Random checking will be done for quality assurance. Insufficiency of funding will not leave any aspect of the work hanging. There will be no discrimination in the removal of encroachments.

Divisional Commissioner S.M. Bobade came not only to do an on-the-spot inspection of the progress being made in the Vrindavan Project, which [Amar Ujala says] is the Chief Minister’s aspiration for glory], but to give clear orders to the responsible development officers to hurry it up.

[Uttar Pradesh has three levels of administrative area. The Agra division is comprised of four districts (jela or zilla), namely Agra, Mathura, Mainpuri and Firozabad. The commissioner is the highest ranking officer in the division. Districts are headed by the district magistrate (DM). These are further subdivided into blocks or tahsils, headed by the block development officer (BDO). Vrindavan is a part of the Mathura tahsil.]

In a pointed meeting, he scolded officers from the water department and warned them that they had to finish the job in three months or face suspension. Where there is a question of stay orders, he said, they should work so quickly that the stay orders do not have time to come into effect. Where stay orders have come into effect, they should use all their powers in court to get them vacated. The whole project must be completed by the end of the year.

On this occasion, the Commissioner met with reporters and spoke about the need to speed up the work. No irregularities will be tolerated.

At about 8 a.m. Monday morning, the Commissioner inspected the new needy women’s shelter in Chaitanya Vihar and the flyover crossing the railway line. He also visited the new 100-bed hospital that is under construction near Pagal Baba’s temple, the design of which he criticized. He then came and inspected the work on the road near Iskcon and expressed displeasure with the slow pace of work and instructed the engineers to have it finished by June 30.

Present were the ADM, Sadar Rakesh Malpani, the assistant director of the MVDA R.K. Singh, secretary Manavendra Singh, municipality representative Yogesh Dvivedi, PWD executive-in-charge Santram, the water department’s Lokendra Sharma, the electricity board’s Jagamohan Lal, and the municipality executive officer S.K. Sharma.

Afterwards, the Commissioner went to the MVDA boardroom and held a meeting after which he spoke to reporters. He said that work had sped up over the last ten days. Different stay orders that had come up in court, problems with chopping down trees in certain places and the inability to get required funding were some of the causes of delay. Stay orders were being vigorously fought in court, and applications for the required funds were being expedited.

The Commissioner furthermore, he said that separate inspections to assure quality were being made and random checks would be made on all aspects of the development work. Action is already being taken against engineers and executives of the PWD with regard to irregularities in road construction. Contractors have also been put on notice.

With regards to complaints that there has been preferential treatment in the removal of encroachments both in Vrindavan and Govardhan, he said that all demolition work is following the approved design and no one will be spared. If there are any exceptions, they will be looked into.

He said that a request has been sent for funds for staff and materials at the new women’s hospital to be released.

All departments were instructed to apply the plan designs as they were given. A joint committee to resolve differences between the PWD and the Water Department has been set up.

The Commissioner gets stuck in Traffic.

Traffic jams in Vrindavan are nothing new, but on Monday a particular difficult situation was caused when the Commissioner came there to inspect the Chief Minister’s dream project. Even he ended up getting stuck in a jam. After inspecting a few places, he came to the Hari Nikunj crossing to examine the street widening on Raman Reti Road. The garbage, open ditches and rubble causing a jam that lasted 20 minutes. After the traffic had cleared, he inspected the whole construction site on foot. Local citizens and some of the managers asked him to order one-way traffic. He said he said that until the roadwork was finished, one-way traffic should be the rule and the road should be closed to lorries.

This digest was based on articles from Amar Ujala and Dainik Jagran.