To curb the rampant illegal construction, Punjab local Government Department will soon ink a pact with the Punjab Remote Sensing Centre (PRSC). Besides, the Department is also working out a plan to convert the nullahs, flowing in the State's cities, into green belts.

Sharing this, the State local Government Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu said that the MoU with PRSC-ludhiana would not only help in curbing the illegal construction in Punjab, but also help in putting a stop to the evasion of property tax. The MoU will initially be for a period of five years, he said.

“The collaboration would result in the game changing benefits like satellite image based mapping (in GIS) of unauthorized colonies, satellite image based mapping of illegal construction, updated property and asset mapping of all corporations, councils and bodies under its control, development of spatial decision support system (SDSS) for effective decision making process, periodic updates for monitoring of the developments of areas falling under local bodies with comprehensive database besides real time monitoring of the status of the construction activities in Punjab,” said Sidhu.

Sidhu said that earlier, ludhiana had only 90,000 houses as per the Government figures whereas the GIS technique revealed the true figure to be four lakh.

He added that with the application of this innovative technique, no government official would be able to hide the real picture for personal gains. “The technique would come in handy for taking effective decisions,” he said.

listing out other futuristic endeavours, Sidhu said that the e-Governance concept occupies a special place in his scheme of things to ensure developmental journey of the state. “As many as 67 services would be brought under the ambit of e-Governance within this year and to give further impetus to this novel concept, an MoU would be signed tomorrow with the e-Gov company of Nandan Nilekani,” he added.

Sidhu said that the team from National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) is coming tomorrow to further the agenda outlined in an MoU signed earlier regarding cleaning of nallahs (drains) flowing in major cities of the State, and turning them into green belts.