Noida MLA Pankaj Singh has said there was some laxity on part of officials that led to a twin-building collapse in his constituency on Tuesday, killing nine people, and called for a sustained campaign against illegal construction.
A six-floor under-construction building had crashed on to a five-storey building next to it in Shahberi village under Bisrakh police station area.
“This was an unfortunate incident,” Singh told PTI. “Certainly there was some laxity on the part of the officials.”
He said stringent action has been initiated against guilty officials and the Uttar Pradesh government has suspended some of them.
A magisterial inquiry was ordered in the incident on Wednesday and Officer on Special Duty in Greater Noida Development Authority, Vibha Chahal, was removed from her post.
Also, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had ordered the suspension of two other officials — project manager V P Singh and assistant project manager Akhtar Abbas Zaidi — for dereliction of duty.
“A sustained campaign should be run to stop such illegal activities and stringent action initiated so that it acts as a deterrent,” said Singh, the son of Union minister Rajnath Singh and a general secretary of the party’s state unit.
The BJP leader also attacked rival parties, saying people “felt cheated” because of their policies and programmes and his party’s prospects in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections would not be hampered by any sort of an alliance.
“We are not going to be perturbed by anyone forging any sort of alliance with anybody else. The BJP is getting the support of the people,” he said.
“People today want development. They have seen performances of the SP, BSP and Congress, and have felt cheated by these political parties. Hence, their (opposition parties) strategy is not going to have any impact on BJP’s poll prospects in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls,” he asserted.
Asked about the party’s debacle in recent Lok Sabha bypolls — Gorakhpur, Phulpur and Kairana — in the state and how the party plans to avoid a repeat, he said, the nature of a by-election is different from that of a general election.
“The pattern and issues affecting the bye-elections are also different. But, when you look back at all the bypolls, the BJP may had lost them, but the party has been able to increase its vote share, despite all these rival political parties coming together. In fact, the faith reposed by the people in the BJP has only increased since 2014 (the last Lok Sabha poll) and 2017 (the last state assembly poll),” he said.
On the two-day meeting of the UP BJP’s working committee in Meerut on August 11 and 12, he said, discussions will be held on various future organisation activities and programmes of the party, including the road map for the 2019 elections.
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