Pune: Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation demolished an illegal under-construction structure spread over around 700sqft in the Thergaon area of Kalewadi in the early hours on Monday amid heavy deployment of police force because residents had gathered in large numbers to protest against the action, claiming that it was being built for a religious school . Several political leaders criticised the action. They claimed that there were over a thousand illegal structures in the same area, but the municipal corporation took action against only one, which had been there for over 25 years.
A senior PCMC (Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation) official said the owners of the illegal structure were issued multiple notices in the past seven to eight months and were requested to stop the ongoing illegal construction. "We had to take action because the construction continued. It is a wrong statement that we demolished a religious school because it is located at a distance, and we did not take any action against it.
We do not know if the school was supposed to be shifted to the illegal under-construction structure, which our anti-encroachment team demolished," he said. A trustee member of the religious school said, "The institution has been operating from a tin shed in the same place since 2002. We have been carrying out concrete construction there now.
We purchased the land in 2001 and own it." About the PCMC's notice, he said the area was under the Pimpri Chinchwad Navanagar Developme.