PMA holds panel discussion on Patiala to be most livable city by 2022
KS Diwan/ royalpatiala.in/ Patiala
The Patiala Management Association (PMA) organized panel discussion on the “Blueprint for Patiala to be the most livable city of Punjab by 2022”. The event was attended by the members and guests of the PMA.
The penalists for the event were AmritKaur Gill (IAS), Additional Principal Secretary to the CM of Punjab, Sanjiv Sharma, Mayor of Patiala, Kumar Amit (IAS), the Deputy Commissioner of Patiala, Gurpreet Singh Khaira( IAS), Commissioner Municipal Corporation, Patiala and Harpreet Sudan(IAS), Chief Administrator of the Patiala Development Authority and Chairman of the Improvement Trust of Patiala.
HPS Lamba, the President of the PMA started off the proceedings with his address, in which he stressed the importance of the participation of the citizens directly in the development and improvement of the community. He expressed a hope that the platform of PMA would help create this kind of aware citizens.
Khaira shared the development work done by the MC and informed that the corporation clean the 13.5 kilometers of sewage drains in the past year, the problem of water logging in the low lying areas had been also addressed to a large extent, shared the plan to shift out all dairy units to outside the populated areas, where the land area has been earmarked and work already started, shifting of stray cattle at village gazipur is already operational and more than 1600 heads of stray cattle already shifted to this Gaushala.
Façade upkeep of the quila Mubarak is already underway, widening of lanes in the old city with covered drains, a fully computerized GSI system to track properties and property-tax paid status, which will be updated in real time.
Kumar Amit, the Deputy Commissioner talked about the amount of green cover increasing, especially in the entry points of the city, where even special trees had been brought in fromorrisa to give a pleasant aesthetic effect to the area in the Rajpura-Patiala highway. He further informed the area under the railway over-bridge opposite to the Bus Stand has been cleaned up.
“The city has not sold off or mortgaged any of its assets and the funds have been raised directly from the state coffers” said Mayor Sanjiv Sharma (Bittuji).He talked about the plans of the city to open up the playgrounds and infrastructure of the government schools in the city area to be used for parking and sports purposes. The Govt. Pheelkhana school area is also being developed for this purpose.
Sudan, Chairman of the Improvement Trust then shared about a very ambitious project of beautification of the Bari-Chotti rivers, which will be developed along the lines of the Changi river project of Singapore as a mixed use commercial and heritage project. The TATA group is already on board for this project. Water to be added to all the water bodies in Patiala, including the rajindra lake, Rajindra Kothi being developed as the medals Gallery and Sports University
Amrit Kaur Gill, Additional Principal secretary to CM Punjab talked about the necessity of citizen’s participation in sports.-She informed about the plans for the revival of the Maharaja Ranjit Singh Award for sports, which had been discontinued for several years, plans of state government to create jobs and rewards for sportspersons in recognition of their performance at international levels,the plans to open a sports university in the outskirts of Patiala.
Rapporteur of the evening, Dr. Maneek Kumar , VP( Planning) of PMA, then summed up all the major points of the evening.The Finance Secretary of PMA, Sanjay Kumar Gupta read a vote of thanks and concluded the evening after inviting the guests for dinner.
