STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) on Saturday carried out extensive anti-encroachment drive on the Narwal bypass and removed illegal constructions from outside major car show rooms, restaurants and car washing centres.
The drive, started early Saturday morning, continued for several hours spreading panic among the owners of showrooms and other business establishments as almost all of them have encroached sizeable portion of road and raised illegal structures to showcase their businesses.
Senior NHAI authorities had been serving frequent warnings to these business establishments as they were working on the road widening project but hardly any one responded to their genuine pleas to remove the illegal structures.
After exhausting all their options NHAI officials this morning, accompanied by strong posse of state police, SDM and other revenue officials started the drive from army gate where they first of all demolished illegal structures raised by a famous restaurant owner.
A nearby car washing centre, which had constructed a ramp and some minor structure beyond their jurisdiction was also targeted and these encroachments were removed too. From the spot the NHAI authorities shifted to other side of the bypass road and started marking original length of the highway road. Beyond the point they went on to remove the encroachments.
Several prominent car showrooms which came their way had to face the brunt of the JCB machine as the structures were raised to ground.
NHAI officials later suspended the drive by sending a strong message to the other encroachers to remove their illegal structures on their own else a similar drive would be launched to demolish the same in near future too.
