BENGALURU: Defending their move of blocking a thoroughfare road that connected Siddharthnagar slum and the city through the air-base in Jalahalli, the Press Information Bureau (Defence Wing) issued a clarification on Wednesday.
The clarification read - The land mafia and other anti-social elements had in the past grabbed 9 acres of defence land of Air Force Station, Jalahalli and named it Siddarthanagar.
These actions had been condoned in the past by the State authorities and subsequently the land was surrendered by the IAF on mutual agreement basis.
The present issue is the case of illegal trespassing in the IAF land and it is an attempt by anti-social elements to prevent the IAF from carrying out their authorised training tasks within their allotted premises. Road access already exists for residents of Siddarthanagar to commute.
The IAF operated entirely within its premise. The land mafia elements who are interested in grabbing the defence land have attempted to disrupt the construction of a boundary wall authorised by the Govt of India.
Post Pathankot, all the IAF stations have been instructed to tighten up their physical security by constructing a boundary wall to avoid any intrusion by anti-national elements and terrorists.
To resolve the present issue, assistance from the Civil Police was also sought. The civil police are in agreement with the IAF viewpoint. The local MLA of the constituency was also contacted, but the construction of the boundary wall could not be executed.
The incident has been investigated by a high level team of the IAF. However, all the allegations made against the IAF have been found baseless and devoid of truth.
The allegation of the blocking of Air Marshal Subroto Mukherjee Road by the IAF is absolutely baseless with intent to mislead the general public and the State authorities.
The Air-Force personnel had abruptly blocked a thoroughfare road leading to Siddarthnagar from the city on Tuesday morning that was passing through its air-base land.
