Young cricketers who play and practice at Baba Ground staged a demonstration to draw the attention of the authorities towards the occupation of their ground. They also threatened to increase their protests which they say will be joined by a large number of people of the area.
The Baba ground, which is the property of Punjab University Oriental Law College, is being used as a parking lot and a venue for holding marriage parties and despite efforts of the cricket officials, the city government failed to get the ground vacated. And now they have staged a protest against the illegal occupation of their ground.
It has been learnt that on Thursday, when some official of the government directed the car stand contractor to not to park vehicles in the ground and locked the main entrance, a group of lawyers forced their way into the ground breaking the locks and also beat the ground staff and parked their vehicles in the ground. Later a prominent police official of the area asked the stand contractor to charge the owners of cars.
It has been learnt that a group of lawyers is getting Rs 70,000 monthly for using the ground as a parking lot and some Punjab Assembly officials have links with those stand contractors. Even the commissioner looked helpless as his directives were also not obeyed and the ground is being used for commercial purposes which is depriving nearly a million population from using the ground for healthy purposes.
When on Thursday morning the lawyers broke into to park their cars, the youngsters who play cricket in that ground staged a protest and threatened to hold a formal protest in the days to come.
The protesters were of the view that their demands are being ignored by the PML (N) government and they are being forced to switch to
other political parties like PTI of Imran Khan
if their ground was not got vacated by the Punjab government.
