Patna: A road-widening and anti-encroachment drive is on in the Bihar capital, and the residents are looking at the whole exercise with mixed feelings. The bulldozers demolished a portion of a house belonging to Union minister S.S. Ahluwalia on Tuesday, the fifth day of the ongoing anti-encroachment drive.

The civic administration said the demolished portion of the house on Boring Canal Road had been built on public land, Ahluwalia, (the Union minister of state for electronics and information technology) says the action was illegal.

“A canal flowed (here) due to which the road has been named Boring Canal Road. Ultimately the canal was covered after hume pipes were laid over the road. Manholes were made for the maintenance of the canal. The measurement was supposed to be taken from the manhole and ensure the width of the road would be 60 feet on each side. If the measurement had been taken from the manhole, my residence wall would have been 64 feet away. But the authorities are measuring from a parking space,” Ahluwalia told the local media.

Well, as one wise guy put it, “The rich want to own bigger and bigger vehicles, just to show off and hog space, so why are they crying over a few feet to widen the road which their bloody behemoths are jamming up in the first place?”

Of course, the mainstream media isn’t kicking up a fuss about the number of livelihoods of ordinary people that this action is demolishing. From humble ironing men, to roadside tailors, to wayside cobblers, each of whom provide valuable services to the ordinary citizen, not the hi-highfalutin mall and air-conditioned variety of shoppers, each one of them has been removed,  so that the gas-guzzling, noise polluting traffic can flow easier around. Even the green strips have not been spared in Boring canal road.

The anti-encroachment drive, ‘a multi-agency campaign’ to rid the city’s roads of street vendors (as though street vendors are pests like rats and vermin) and illegal constructions that cause traffic snarls ( but not things and structures such as road corner temples and shrines) , was launched on August 16. Areas such as Boring Road, Boring Canal Road, Fraser Road and Ashok Rajpath have been declared priority areas for the drive by the administration.

While the poor have no option but to scram, the rich and powerful are flexing their muscles.  The district administration and Patna Municipal Corporation are facing stiff opposition, receiving ‘recommendation calls’ from VIPs and increasing public pressure when portions of houses built illegally started being demolished in the affected   areas .

On Tuesday, like on the other days, the drive was met initially with protests by local residents who eventually relented and removed their belongings to allow the demolition to continue.

But now lawyers have stepped in to protect the wealthy. “The Patna High Court orders have not been implemented in true spirit. The officials are carrying out operations as per their own will and often beyond permissible limits,” alleged Praveer, an advocate at Patna Civil Court, who is a neighbour of Ahluwalia on Boring Canal Road.

Two narratives exist. Authorities say that warnings given were ignored, house owners cry foul play.  Baleshwar Prasad (60), told the local media: “The bulldozers even demolished part of houses not built on public land. A portion of our home has been bulldozed. We urged the authorities to take the local people into confidence while taking measurements but no official consulted us. They came at night, took measurements, just gave us time to remove our belongings and demolition started.”

An official said prior notice is always served to the owners of houses whose structures are on the public land.

A newspaper reported: “We are encountering some problems, but people are also supporting the drive as it was started in the public interest,” said the official who requested anonymity. (Why the official who is doing his duty has to request anonymity baffles the average reader, but such is life!)

The drive is supposed to continue till the end of this month.

  Bihar, development, naked politics