Aerocity Cleaning Tender Promised After Residents Protest एयरोसिटी में निवासियों के विरोध के बाद सफ़ाई टेंडर का वादा ਏਅਰੋਸਿਟੀ ਵਿੱਚ ਵਸਨੀਕਾਂ ਦੇ ਵਿਰੋਧ ਤੋਂ ਬਾਅਦ ਸਫ਼ਾਈ ਟੈਂਡਰ ਦਾ ਵਾਅਦਾ

On Tuesday a group from Aerocity carried a dustbin, wrapped up like a Diwali present, into the office of the Mohali Municipal Corporation's commissioner. The mayor was out, so the commissioner received it. Ward councillors and residents' welfare associations said their block roads go unswept and their parks are full of rubbish. The commissioner told them a tender for the work was due on the sixth of November and that the problem would be sorted out soon.

The protest was reported by The Tribune the next day. It puts a plain question to the corporation that took Aerocity inside its limits: who is now responsible for keeping the place clean, and when does that start to show on the ground.

What the residents told the commissioner

The complaints were specific. The roads inside the Aerocity blocks had not been swept. Parks were littered. Residents said stray dog bites were rising and so was the number of cattle wandering the blocks. People from the nearby villages of Naraingarh Jhungian and Rurka joined them.

The councillor for the ward told the paper that parks were full of garbage. He said people had been better off when the panchayats looked after cleanliness, and he blamed the state government. Those are his claims in a political argument. The report carries no reply to them.

The sharpest complaint was about being passed from one office to another. Residents said that when they went to the corporation, it pointed to GMADA, and when they went to GMADA, its officials pointed back at the corporation. They asked where they were meant to go now. They also warned that they would block the Airport Road if nothing improved.

The report says the commissioner sat and listened with his head down. His only answer on record is the tender, said to be "in the offing" for the sixth.

How Aerocity came under the corporation

GMADA planned Aerocity and allotted its plots. For most of its life it sat outside any municipal body. Its roads and parks were GMADA's to build and GMADA's to repair. When floods damaged roads and boundary walls in the area a few years ago, it was GMADA that tendered the repairs and the special repair of parks across most of the blocks.

That changed with the corporation's new limits. The Local Government Department drafted them in October last year and named Aerocity alongside IT City and a long run of sectors in the eighties and nineties. By the end of the year the expansion was recorded as done. The officials who announced it set out the order of events: notification, demarcation, new wards and only then the transfer of services such as roads and sanitation from GMADA and private developers to the corporation.

The residents told the paper they have been under the corporation for about six months. Their count of the months differs from the official record of the boundary change, which goes back further. What both accounts agree on is that the boundary moved before the services did.

Our piece on [the corporation's new limits](/article/408-is-aerocity-inside-the-mohali-corporation-what-the-new-limits-cover-and-what-they-leave-out) sets out which sectors and villages came in and which were left out.

The money behind the handover

Moving a service from one public body to another is a matter of staff and money. Early this year the corporation's House resolved to seek a large sum from GMADA before formally taking over the records of the newly added areas, citing incomplete roads, poor drainage and missing civic amenities. That resolution was reported in January. No public answer from GMADA to it has been found, and no published agreement between the two bodies sets out who pays for what in the meantime.

The older sectors offer a model. There the corporation does the maintenance and GMADA has reimbursed part of what it spends, a cheque at a time, against the corporation's requests. Whether Aerocity will be run on the same footing is not stated anywhere on record.

This is the gap the residents described. GMADA no longer sees Aerocity as its job. The corporation has not yet put its own contractors on the roads. A sweeping tender is the first sign of the corporation stepping in.

What the tender does and does not settle

Very little is public about the tender beyond the commissioner's remark. The report gives the tender no scope or value. Nor does it list the blocks. It does not say whether parks are included alongside roads, or how long the contract would run.

A tender is also a first step. Bids have to come in, be opened and be awarded before a contractor starts work, so even a tender issued on the day promised leaves the streets as they are for a while. The corporation has taken this route before on rubbish. Its waste tender for the newer parts of the city planned [garbage collection points in Aerotropolis Blocks B and D](/article/390-aerotropolis-blocks-b-and-d-get-garbage-collection-points-what-the-mohali-mc-waste-tender-plans), well ahead of any homes being built there.

Stray animals sit outside a sweeping contract altogether. Dog control and the impounding of cattle are separate corporation functions, and the commissioner's reply did not touch them. For residents who raised dog bites first, that part of the complaint has no date attached to it at all.

The villages raise a different point. Naraingarh Jhungian and Rurka were run by panchayats before the boundary moved, and cleaning there was a village matter. Their residents now deal with the same corporation as the plot owners in Aerocity. The report gives no sign of a separate arrangement for them.

What changes for an owner in Aerocity

For an owner, the corporation's arrival has two sides. One is the bill. Aerocity is part of the tax base the corporation is counting on this year, and owners there are being brought onto its property tax roll, as our report on [the corporation's tax forecast](/article/413-mohali-corporation-counts-on-new-sectors-for-tax-boost) explains. The other side is the service the tax is meant to buy, and that is what Tuesday's protest was about.

The plot itself is untouched by the change. An Aerocity plot remains a GMADA allotment. Its transfer and its no dues certificate still go through GMADA, and its land use is still set by the master plan. The handover concerns sweeping, parks, drains and streetlights, not title.

The open point

The commissioner named the sixth of November as the day the tender was due. Whether it was issued on that day, and what it covers, is not yet on record. The residents have said what they will do if nothing changes: block the Airport Road. The next test is whether a contractor's crew is seen in the Aerocity blocks before they carry out that threat.

Sources: The sources we use are listed on our Editorial Sources page.

This piece reports a residents' protest and the corporation's response as published. It gives no legal or financial advice, and the civic position of any property depends on its own records.