In a Bond movie there is a scene where Bond encounters a tribal group. The leader of the group in order to prove his prowess starts swinging his sword. After watching this for a while, Bond picks up his pistol, shoots him dead and leaves the place.

The above scene came to my mind after my meeting with the city Mayor recently.

Now to my sword swinging.

In order to establish a road link according to a 1973 layout, which the Government turned down as ‘unapproved’, I spent hell of a time and some money to procure supportive documents to establish the genuiness of the layout.

When I started collecting evidence for the same, I received two murder threat calls. I promptly reported the same to police, and a police officer from DIG’s office came to my house and assured me that I won’t be receiving any such calls in future.

Even while I had been appealing to the Corporation to stop construction work on the purported road-link site, a three-storey building got constructed. Having failed to stop construction, I focused on the next vacant site which could also be used as a road link.

This time I was successful in preventing construction on that site, as the officials were aware of the strength of my evidence.

Last week, in a reply to my complaint on the issue, Corporation assured me that a road link could be formed by acquiring the vacant site, with a rider that I should ask Revenue Department officials to meet the Corporation officials for the same.

This reply prompted me to meet the Mayor to represent that it was not fair to ask me to arrange the meeting of officials. Even while I was thinking of explaining the whole episode to him, upon seeing the layout, the Mayor simply called the zonal officer and told him to acquire the property under TDR-TDC (Transfer of Development Rights - Transfer of Development Certificate ) system and take necessary action to connect the roads to help the public.

The swift action of Mayor made me think of the Bond movie.

Ironically, this was the same layout which was rejected by the then Assistant Commissioner one-and-a-half years ago as unauthorised one, and it will remain the unauthorised one from the Corporation’s point of view in future too.

What turned the tide in people’s favour, you may wonder. The reason is, whereas the three-storey building lies on the ‘Ramnagar North’ side, the related document shows the property address as ‘Ramnagar South’, Madipakkam.

With power, be it pistol, knowledge or other types, one can do wonders, and blunders too.

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