With the Railway administration launching a drive against the encroachers in Railway settlement, Collector Siddharth Komal Singh Pardeshi held an important meeting at the collectorate here last evening to discuss on the rehabilitation of the evicted people who are poor and landless and after the drive have lost their shelter. Pardeshi instructed the Railway authorities to arrange for the rehabilitation of these poor people before initiating the drive. He also discussed on many other issues related to the development of Railway settlement and Bilaspur city.
During the meeting Divisional Railway Manager (DRM) Devraj Panda said that the Railways’ many ambitious projects, including loco Shed to be constructed in the Railway settlement here are pending due to the encroachment. Despite giving ample time to the encroachers they did not vacate the area hampering the project. Panda said that so far the Railway authority has demolished about 1100 illegal hutments from the Railway settlement and 500 more would be grounded in the following days to free the land. He said that the Board has taken serious note of encroachment of Railway land and have instructed all the zonal to launch drives and free the Railway land from encroachers.
Pardeshi asked the Railway authorities to earmark land in Railway settlement to rehabilitate the encroachers with support from public representatives and the district administration. He asked the officials to give prior notice to the encroachers before launching eviction drive and also asked the district officials to rehabilitate the victims in different colonies constructed under different schemes by the Government for the poor. In the meeting many other issues related to the development of Railway settlement and Bilaspur city were discussed. Bilaspur Mayor Kishore Rao, Commissioner Bilaspur Municipal Corporation Ranu Sahu, Senior Divisional Engineer (Co-ordination) of South East Central Railway (SECR) Bilapsur Division Ankush Gupta, Senior Divisional Security Commissioner B Ramakrishna and others were present in the meeting.