Jalandhar, March 20
Taking a tough stand towards those educational institutions which were raising huge buildings in violation of the Punjab Municipal Corporation Act, the Jalandhar Municipal Corporation has finally slapped a penalty to the tune of about Rs 22.53 lakh on the management of the local C.T. Public School, which had allegedly constructed a huge school complex spread over 14 acres of land at Maqsudan near here, sans any sanctioned building plan.

The MC authorities have come out of their slumber to take action against the defaulters and to realise the penalty amount following a story published by The Tribune, on February 27, wherein it was revealed that on the one hand the civic body was facing huge resource crunch and on the other was doing nothing to realise huge penalty amounts from influential defaulters.

The Jalandhar Municipal Corporation Commissioner, Mr Samir Kumar, said today that a notice had been served on the management of C.T. Public School to deposit a sum of Rs 22,54,375 with the civic body as compounding fee if it wanted to get the building plan of the school regularised. He said he had already instructed the officials concerned to prepare a list of other educational and commercial institutions, which had been found violating the building byelaws of the civic body allegedly in connivance with the civic body staff for years together. The Punjab Local Bodies Minister, Chaudhary Jagjit Singh, has already made it clear that no defaulter will be spared.

Meanwhile, sources in the civic body revealed that delay in action was due to the refusal of entry to building inspectors, by the school management. The team had to be detailed again with instructions that in case any obstruction was created by the school management or it refused to cooperate, help of the police authorities be taken.