: The District administration forcibly took over 44 cents of land owned by a timber firm near Changampuzha Park on Tuesday for Kochi Metro and handed it over to Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC).
The land was taken over with police protection by a team led by Deputy Collector (Land Acquisition) Sobhana after repeated reminders to the brothers, said a high ranking District administration official. “The land is crucial for locating a landing, booking office, parking area and commercial space for the metro station proposed there. We could not begin civil works at the site for the past 18 months due to objections raised by the owners,” said DMRC sources.
This is the third plot being acquired forcibly for metro works, the others being at Lissie Junction and near Maharaja’s College Ground on M.G. Road.
Simultaneously, acquisition of three properties in the Palarivattom-Deshabhimani Junction stretch where traffic snarls are common, too, is crucial for smooth progress of girder launch and other metro work. As for delay in widening the bottleneck on the Deshabhimani Junction-Kaloor stretch, the sources said that a request was sent to Kochi Metro Rail Limited (KMRL) over a year ago. But the metro agency issued a letter to the District Administration only last November. Next in line is acquisition of two big plots owned by partners of a jewellery group at Edappally and by a textile firm in northern end of M.G. Road. “The partners have agreed to hand over the land, while one more round of negotiation will be held within a week with the textile firm’s owner,” said District Collector M.G. Rajamanickam.
“The District administration’s responsibility ends with acquiring land. In the case of land owned by the textile firm, it is negotiated take over of the land by KMRL, where we have very little role other than facilitation. The issue will hopefully be settled in a week, while hassles in widening Deshabhimani Junction-Kaloor stretch will be removed in a month,” he said.
Mr Rajamanickam said that encroachments into ‘puramboke’ land is rampant in the city, narrowing down even arterial roads in the metro corridor and stifling movement of vehicles. A strong and sustained drive is needed to reclaim government land that fell into wrong hands over the past many decades, he said.
This is the third plot being acquired forcibly for Kochi Metro.
