TOBA TEK SINGH, Nov 25: The Tehsil Municipal Administration has suspended its plan to construct a market outside the Akbari Park near the post office.

According to details, 17 shops were demolished a year ago in Choori Bazaar by the TMA on a court order on the petition of a landowner filed against shops in front of his property.

Later, the shopkeepers pressurized the tehsil Nazim through union council Nazims, councillors and area parliamentarians for the allotment of alternative land for the construction of their shops.

The TMA decided to give them land outside the Akbari Park. It also included in the list of affectees the names of three shopkeepers whose shops were demolished sometime back in an anti-encroachment drive.

Punjab Forest Minister Dr Ashfaqur Rahman was informed that TMA officials were trying to include the names of some 13 other people in the list. When the residents of Akbari Park came to know about the construction of shops in the residential area, they said they would resist the same.

Later, Dr Ashfaq held a meeting with tehsil Nazim Chaudhry Rafiq, district Nazim Chaudhry Ashfaq and other TMA officials, and criticized the decision to construct shops at the proposed site.

He proposed that the list should be scrutinized, and the names of those people who were not the affectees be removed from it. He also proposed that the shops be constructed in the old police station building in Committee Bazaar which was owned by the TMA. Upon it the TMA suspended the decision to construct shops outside Akbari Park.