Residents foiled an encroachment attempt on a plot of government land in Kadma by alerting police and the civic body on Tuesday morning.

The plot is under the Jamshedpur Notified Area Committee (JNAC) on Road No. 6 at Ramnagar, a densely populated area in Kadma.

Some locals goon had engaged labourers to level the uneven land, measuring around 5,000 sq ft, and for digging work for laying foundations of houses, but they fled after a team of the JNAC officials had reached there on being informed by local residents on Tuesday morning.

The area falls under Jamshedpur West Assembly constituency.

Sambhu Gope, a locality resident, said the vacant plot is used to dump garbage.

“As a group of labourers along with some outsiders started cleaning the place, we thought they must be working for road widening. But we gathered that they were making attempts to grab the land, which is beside the road. We immediately informed the police first and then the JNAC,” Gope said.

He said that from the body conversations of the people it seemed they had political connections, adding that the locality residents would find out which leader’s backing the land-grabbers had.

Kadma police station officer in-charge Vinay Kumar said the cops had received a call from a resident in Ramnagar that some outsiders were trying to grab government land.

JNAC special officer Krishna Kumar had sent a team of civic body officials to the place immediately on receiving the complaint. Led by city manager Ambuj Kumar, the JNAC team reached the spot. That is when the encroachers stopped the work and fled.

“The land which was being encroached adjoins Road No. 6. We have successfully thwarted the encroachers,” said city manager Ambuj Kumar. “We have also shared my cellphone number and that of the special officer, JNAC, with the locality residents so that they may inform us if the encroachers turn up again to grab the land.”

He said just behind the plot a community centre is to be set up by the government.

“We are alert and will do whatever is necessary for preventing the land-grabbers from committing any encroachment at Ramnagar,” Kadma OC Vinay Kumar said.