LDA defends demolition in Sahara Shaher

Lucknow, Jun 20: Lucknow Development Authority(LDA) has defended its action of the demolition in Sahara Shaher and said it's step was completely legal and rules have not been violated.

'' Construction by Sahara India Group on the alignment land of scheduled zonal road and green belt under Lucknow Master Plan was completely illegal'', LDA spokesperson said in a statement here yesterday.

He said the Vice-Chairman of LDA had called a meeting on June 13 in connection of encroachment removal, in which Mr Amitabh Rai and Mr J C Kukreti participated on behalf of Sahara Group.

In the meeting, the representatives of the group accepted that it had the illegal possession on the 30-meter-wide road in city's Master Plan and they agreed for removal of illegal construction.

'' In lieu of it, Sahara India had demolished 1400 meter wall, situated beside the embankment on the night of June 17-18. It had also removed the 400-meter-long wall situated at eastern side. But the group had not removed the illegal construction on 30-meter-wide zonal road, which had been removed by the LDA later.

In this way, the statement of Sahara Group that it had not received any notice regarding the action of encroachment removal is completely baseless and false and it proves that any group can go up to such an extent of wrong publicity with a view to misguide for furthering its interests'', the spokesman maintained.

The spokesman also said the LDA had given the directives to the representatives of Sahara Group from time to time for removal of encroachment but it did not pay any heed.

Therefore, the statement of Sahara India Corporate Communications chairman Abhijeet Sarkar that the action has been taken suddenly without any prior information is completely baseless, because the group was completely aware about the whole matter.

The LDA spokesman also said '' action of encroachment removal had been taken at several places in Lucknow and other parts of the state earlier too and there was no question of any discrimination with regard to taking action on the basis of power or strength being held by the person behind the encroachment''.

UNI