Office bearers of associations representing allottees of three major Jalandhar Improvement Trust schemes — Surya Enclave Extension, Bibi Bhani Complex, and Inderpuram Master Gurbanta Singh Enclave — came together today to highlight what they called years of neglect and non-payment of dues running into crores.
The press conference held here at the Press Club, presided over by Jatinder Mohan Sharma, President of Surya Enclave Extension Welfare Society (Regd.) along with CA Revant Behl, Secretary of the same body, and Darshan Singh, President of Bibi Bhani Complex, painted a grim picture of pending executions, missing files, and government indifference.
The representatives said that around 250 executions are pending in various courts and that the Trust owes them nearly Rs 70 crore. On this amount, they added, the Trust is incurring almost Rs 7 crore annually in interest, draining public resources. “Files routinely go missing from the Trust office, and locating a single document takes days. We had high hopes from the Aam Aadmi Party government, but our grievances remain unresolved,” Sharma said.
Recalling the Covid-19 period, the allottees said that while Rs 38 crore was released to them, the Trust simultaneously cleared its Rs 110-crore bank liability by borrowing Rs 50 crore each from Amritsar and Ludhiana Trusts. “Even now, the Jalandhar Trust has properties worth crores that can be auctioned to refund allottees. But the will to act is missing,” Behl noted.
The leaders further pointed out that despite courts issuing several non-bailable warrants against Trust officials, no concrete action has been taken. Many allottees, they said, have died waiting for justice, leaving behind widows who are forced to knock on doors endlessly. “From 2006 to 2016, people deposited their lifetime savings with the Trust. Yet even after clear court orders, we remain unpaid. It is shameful that the Mann government has belied its own slogan ‘Sade Buzurg, Sada Mann’,” Sharma remarked.
They added that almost all bank accounts of the Trust stand attached under court directions, leaving the institution paralyzed. “We make a fervent appeal to the Punjab government to refund our hard-earned money without delay. This injustice has gone on for far too long,” Darshan Singh said.
The associations warned that if the government continues to ignore their plight, they will be left with no option but to intensify their protests.