SRINAGAR: The government on Sunday sealed almost 45 shops in Banihal and most of them were either pharmacies or diagnostic centres. The market existed on the state land in, what is being called “hospital gali” and has mostly been sealed and taken over by the local municipal committee.
Reports reaching from the highway town said that authorities demolished a shop and a ‘tin shed’ located n the same lane. All the shops we linked directly or indirectly with the health sector.
Authorities had informed the shopkeepers in anticipation that their shops are being sealed and they had removed their belongings enabling officials to seal the market. Local residents said the decision will seriously impact healthcare sector and will result in jobless of around 400 people. One report said the sealed shops include 22 pharmacies – shops were medicine are sold, nine clinical laboratories and five optical shops. One report said some of the facilities that were being provided by these shops are missing in the hospital.
Two political activists were taken into preventive custody before the start of the drive to retrieve state land along the sub-district hospital road amid tight security arrangements, they said.
Fearing disruptions, police had taken into custody two local activists, Mohammad Ilyas Wani of the Democratic Azad Party (DAP) and Qaiser Hamid Sheikh of the Congress party.
The anti-encroachment drive was a joint effort led by the civil administration and the Jammu and Kashmir Police. There were symbolic protests as well.
Officials said the market had come illegally on the state land on the banks of a stream. The encroachments that were undone include part of the premises taken over by a private school.
Local businesses believe that since the shops have been formally taken over by the Municipal Committee, these may, in the coming days, be reallocated to the shopkeepers who were running their business from these shops and did not own them. Authorities, however, are tight-lipped, making no promises. They left after sealing the shops and pasting a paper on every one of them suggesting the property belongs to the MC Banihal.
