Ahmedabad: Damaging public property to fix private problems has landed the owner of a restaurant in Gota in hot water. The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) sealed the eatery and on Monday after the owner dug up a newly constructed footpath to repair the establishment’s private sewer line.Taking a strict stance against the destruction of civic infrastructure, the solid waste management (SWM) department but also slapped the owner of Jalaram Restaurant with a penalty of Rs 50,000 for damaging the sidewalk.The crackdown did not stop there. In a separate instance of heavy-duty littering, another individual was fined Rs 1 lakh for allowing trucks to spill waste and debris across public roads. In a massive sanitation drive, the SWM department also inspected 90 units in various wards of the city’s North West Zone. The results were telling: 62 units received formal notices for various violations, and 5kg of banned plastic was seized. The department also sealed five other units across Ghatlodia (3), Bodakdev (1), and Gota (1) for public littering, collecting a total of Rs 2.31 lakh in fines throughout the day.
