Meeting of Ludhiana Unit of Punjab Pradesh Beopar Mandal held in presence of Mayor Balkar Singh Sandhu

Ludhiana, November 10, 2019: A meeting of Ludhiana District Unit of Punjab Pradesh Beopar Mandal (PPBM) held here today under the leadership of Arvinder Singh Makkar, District President. It was attended among others by Balkar Singh Sandhu, Mayor, Municipal Corporation, Ludhiana.
The traders’ leaders while addressing the meeting apprised the city mayor about the problems being faced by them and sought his immediate intervention to find the solution. Mayor heard the grievances of the traders in a sympathetic manner and assured to sort out them in the due course of time. He said he was always ready to listen to the grievances of the traders and get them resolved as early as possible.
Addressing the traders, Mayor asked them to extend their complete support and pay maximum taxes to Municipal Corporation so that development works could be carried on smoothly. He said all out efforts were being made to check pilferage at all levels in the corporation, adding pilferage worth Rs.25 lakh to Rs.30 lakh has been stopped as far as the use of diesel was concerned.
Further, Mayor said that he has made every effort to get the Jagraon Bridge functioning possibly by March or April next year. He admitted that this over-bridge is the life line of the city. He added a great efforts were to be made to shift about 150 jhuggi dwellers from the surroundings of this over-bridge. “It was really a very challenging task”, he said. He asked the traders to let him aware about weaknesses of Municipal Corporation, Ludhiana, so that these weaknesses could be removed.
To another point raised by the traders, he assured that condition of the city roads would be improved in the time to come. Regarding Buddha Nullah, he said the Punjab chief minister is taking keen interest in getting this nullah pollution-free. He said a project costing worth about Rs.1500 crore is being prepared and hoped the project will be implemented in the time to come with cooperation of Rajasthan Government.
To a request made by the traders, Mayor assured that he would get a meeting arranged between the leaders of the Punjab Pradesh Beopar Mandal and the Punjab chief minister so that pending issues of the traders could be resolved at the earliest possible time. He asked traders to support the Municipal Corporation officials to resolve the issue of encroachments outside the shops.
Earlier, addressing the meeting, the mandal leaders including state secretary Mohinder Aggarwal and state general secretary Sunil Mehra highlighted problems being faced by the traders’ community. Aggarwal spoke about the problems being faced by traders in filing their property tax. He said there is an urgent need to streamline the things. He said in many cases UID number has not been linked to the properties resulting to which traders are unable to file their property tax. They also expressed their concern over the increasing trend of online retailing. They said this trend is harming the traditional retailing across the country. They sought intervention of the government to safeguard interest of the traditional retailers across the country. They also expressed their concern over amendments in the labour law. They termed the amendments as “dangerous”. Sunil Mehra announced that I-cards would be issued to the mandal members in the future.
In the today’s meeting the mandal leaders including Sunil Mehra, Mohinder Aggarwal and Arvinder Singh Makkar also expressed concern over a hike of 5 paisa per unit made by the Punjab State Power Corporation Ltd (PSPCL) under garb of introducing fuel cost adjustment (FCA). It said the arrears would be added to current power bills of the power consumers. Arvinder Singh Makkar said this would be an additional economic burden on power consumers. It was stated that the Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal had assured once and again to provide power supply at Rs.5 per unit and on the other hand power tariff has been increased many times since the present state government took over. “The Congress leadership while in the Opposition had been opposing the SAD-BJP alliance government in Punjab for increasing power tariff from retrospective dates and now its own government led by Capt Amarinder Singh has been following the footsteps of its predecessor government which is highly condemnable”, said the mandal leaders. The mandal leaders said the state government was doing partiality with urban power consumers compared to rural power consumers. The government was providing power subsidy worth about Rs.8,500 crore per annum to rural power consumers whereas it was making hike after hike in power tariff of urban consumers. “We are not against giving power subsidy to needy”, they said, adding power subsidy should be continued only to farmers having 7-8 acres of agricultural land.
The mandal leaders advised traders to always remain vigilant about developments taking place in their surroundings, district, state, country and world as well. They advised traders to make a habit of reading newspapers and watching news bulletins on television besides doing their routine business. Besides, traders must have complete knowledge about the government policies.
The meeting among others was attended by Kasturi Lal Mittal, Pawan Lehar, Kamal Gupta, Pawan Batra, Jagmohan Singh, Acchru Ram Gupta,Amrit Lal Verma, Ashok Thapar, Parveen Sharma, Ashwani Mahajan, Rajinder Singh Sodhi, Harish Saggar, and the Youth Akali Dal leader Gurdeep Singh Gosha. Gosha suggested that the mandal should constitute a separate wing of the youths, which should propagate matters related to traders on various social media platforms.