No one profited from inclusion in Dharamsala MC; residents want compensation

Residents of Khaniyara claim they haven’t benefited much from their neighborhood’s inclusion in the Dharamsala Municipal Corporation in 2015, claiming they haven’t had access to amenities like lamps, pucca roadways, and sewerage suited for an urban area in eight years.

Additionally, Ward 15 residents are no longer able to receive benefits under the state government’s homestay program. The inhabitants said that while they had previously benefited from living in a rural region, they were now being required to pay property taxes without receiving any benefits. Because Khaniyara hamlet was next to the popular tourist destination of Dharamsala, local resident Rishav Sharma said that before to 2015, he had operated a guesthouse in a section of his house.

He was forced to shut down his homestay operation after 2015 when authorities from the Tourism Department informed him that the program was intended for rural regions and that he could no longer operate the facility since his residence was now under an urban body. He regretted that when the hamlet was included to Dharamsala MC, the locals lost their means of subsistence.

Another citizen, Satya Gurang, said that they anticipated receiving advantages from the Smart City initiative after being included in the MC region. He said, “Yet there are still a lot of kuccha streets in the area, no sewerage facilities, and many areas without streetlights.”

The lack of door-to-door rubbish collection services and public dustbins in the neighborhood is also lamented by the locals. Most of the time, individuals throw their trash into rivulets since there isn’t a suitable mechanism in place for collection. The rivulets in the ward are becoming blocked with plastic debris at various points.

Another resident, Naina Sharma, said that several local women were denied work opportunities as a result of the village’s inclusion in the MC. Prior to Khaniyara’s inclusion in the MC, women from the hamlet could get jobs via the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. She said that the government had failed to provide the local women an alternate source of work.

The ward’s uncontrolled expansion, according to Khaniyara locals, has constricted down several streets and passageways. Since the region is under the MC, it is important to follow the guidelines set out by the Town and Country Planning Department to prevent individuals from encroaching on public pathways. The people were having issues since so many business structures were being built in the neighborhood against the ordinances, they said.