JKNPP protests seeking abolition of toll plazas in Jammu

| JAMMU, JULY 23 |

Jammu Kashmir National Panthers Party activists on Thursday staged a protest demonstration seeking abolition of toll plazas in Jammu. While setting ablaze the effigy of BJP and raising anti-government slogans, the enraged protesters sought abolition of Lakhanpur Toll Plaza besides others and demanded immediate roll back of the proposal mooted for issuing new licenses of liquor shops in the interest of the people.
Lambasting the BJP government for installing Lakhanpur Toll Plaza on the gateway of J&K and keeping in pipeline the construction of two more plazas, one at Fallan Mandal on the Ring road and another on Akhnoor road, the JKNPP activists said that the move was fraught with dangerous portends. They said that people of Jammu were wary of even the existing Toll Plazas at Ban and Sarore which were taxing them heavily in addition to another one at Nashri. �The people were up in arms against the government seeking disbanding of these Toll Plazas. With BJP leadership cheating them by false assurances amid revival and establishment of Lakhanpur Toll Plaza had turned the civil unrest from bad to worse with massive public outrage�, the agitating activists rued. Describing the establishment of Lakhanpur Toll Plaza and other installations as points of forced extortion of taxes from the people, they said that with the plan to install 6 Toll Plazas in the vicinity of Jammu, the huge taxation in the form of multiple Toll Plazas was simply unaffordable for the common masses and particularly those who had to commute on regular basis between Jammu, Akhnoor, Katra, Udhampur, Samba and Lakhanpur. They accused the Centre of doling discrimination to Jammu region in view of only one such Toll Plaza functional in Kashmir while the Dogras were put under the burden of road tax to fill up its coffers.