‘City’s transformation is my top priority’

LUCKNOW: The job is not new but the challenges are. Kaushal Raj Sharma, district magistrate, Lucknow has occupied the hot seat five times before as DM. But being at the helm of the administration in the state capital is no mean task. And Sharma, a 2006 batch IAS officer knows this. An M Tech in textile engineering, he is keen to put his skills and experiences to use to deliver as per the priorities of the Yogi government. On his third day in office, Sharma, who hails from Bhiwani district in Haryana, was surrounded by people, grasping problems of the city when HT caught up with him for a candid talk. What are the challenges before you as DM Lucknow? The most important challenge is the city’s transformation, to make it a model city, bringing it on the list of top 10 cities. Another challenge is to ensure effective implementation of the state government’s schemes uniformly in rural and urban pockets. Development of the industrial belt and rural areas that have about some 570 villages is another challenging task. And from May 12, changes will be visible. What are the issues that top your priority list? I believe encroachment, cleanliness and traffic are serious issues . Hence we are starting with these. In the past few marathon meetings that I held with my officers and departments, I stressed on the problems and the solutions. I am hopeful that our team will be able to mitigate these problems. Albeit encroachment, cleanliness and traffic are the basic issues that haunt the locals, from where would you start? For now we are targeting the most problematic areas which include Charbagh, Qaiserbagh, Hazratganj and Chowk. All these areas are also the most encroached areas and this has affected traffic and cleanliness. So we will target these areas first. Has the administration prepared any blueprint to tackle these problems? Our task list is ready and we have also formed special teams to tackle the menaces. The teams includes ACMs, CO, zonal officers of Nagar Nigam, executive engineer from LDA, engineers from PWD and other senior officers . Bulldozing encroachments would be our priority and then cleanliness and traffic of a particular area would be taken up. Other districts have effective and advanced public grievances system, but ours lacks on this front. Ironing out problems in the city is a joint initiative, we alone cannot do it. We need support from the people in terms of suggestions and grievances if any. We are in the process of starting a Facebook page and a WhatsApp account where people can report the issues which concern them the most.