Bus stand: Pernambut residents to boycott civic polls

Suresh Kumar, who was in Chennai in connection with the issue, said they wanted quashing of GO 177, which empowered the local body to shift the terminus from the municipality to the nearby Sathgar village panchayat.

Their prayer in the court also includes shifting of the 35-year-old police station to a location across the road, where enough land is available so that the present bus stand can be expanded to that place.

Committee member Meeranji C Saleem, a former councillor, said “the retrieval committee would stick to its earlier stand of boycotting the ensuing local body elections, which may be held in February, and to stop paying taxes to the local body if it goes ahead with this anti-people move as the local body was fully aware that the public sentiment was against shifting the bus stand.”

However, Pernambut Consumers Welfare and Protection Committee president T Bashiruddin was incensed that despite so much of furore over the contentious bus stand, the municipality was totally oblivious to the plight of the travelling public with the municipal office and the terminus being separated by less than 50 metres on the same road.

“This taluk HQ bus stand has a rickety waiting shed for passengers, but as it is dilapidated and filled with rubbish and used by locals to park their two-wheelers, the passengers have to squat or sit on the ground due to the lack of seats,” he said. Elaborating further, he said “anti-social elements use it as a drinking venue at nights despite the police station being right next door”.

Bashiruddin demanded that the local body which collects tax and toll from bus stand users remove the “encroaching flower shops, initiate criminal action against the shop owners and also remove the accumulated garbage inside the shed and provide seats for the travelling public”.