Ludhiana: The local fire department has demanded land for a third emergency station near the Jalandhar Bypass, even as two earlier approved stations remain on the drawing board.The request for a station in Ludhiana North assembly constituency highlights growing desperation within emergency services to cut response times to the city’s expanding industrial sectors, even as its existing multi-station expansion plan has stalled.The two initial stations, proposed for the West and South constituencies, have failed to take off after months of administrative failures. In the West constituency, municipal officials bowed to political pressure to float tenders before even securing a physical site.A potential location in BRS Nagar was abandoned abruptly after the Enforcement Directorate arrested Punjab minister Sanjeev Arora in a money laundering probe, halting all local administrative decision-making.Consequently, the single station at Hambran Road remains dangerously overstretched, serving as the sole emergency responder for the entire western sector.Progress has been equally sluggish in the South constituency’s Dhandhari industrial cluster. While the civic body finally secured a contractor after multiple failed tendering rounds, the project cannot move forward without final rate approval from the finance and contracts committee.Assistant divisional fire officer Jaswinder Singh acknowledged the ongoing infrastructure delays but defended the department’s forward planning, stating they remain in active talks with municipal representatives to clear land for the new locations while streamlining the bottlenecked Dhandhari site.
