With the delay in land acquisition stonewalling the time-bound completion of Kochi metro rail, the authorities are set to go the whole hog to take over the remaining 3.1 hectares of the required land.
“We are set to forcibly acquire about 23 cents required for the construction of a metro station at the Lissy junction. The step comes as the landowner declined to surrender the land despite several rounds of discussions’’, said P. Sobhana, Deputy Collector, land acquisition.
The plot will be taken over by invoking provisions of the Land Acquisition Act, which empowers the government to acquire land in case of urgency, without giving the land losers the opportunity to contest the propriety of the acquisition and the opportunity to be heard.
The acquired property will be later handed over to the DMRC, which implements the project.
Alongside, the authority is also contemplating evicting the occupants of a commercial building near Aluva for setting up a metro station here.
Acquisition of the 4.75 cents plot, which houses the building, has been delayed due to differences over the compensation package for its tenants.
“While the R&R (Rehabilitation and Resettlement) package by KMRL stipulates a compensation of Rs.6.86 lakh for commercial tenants, the occupants here have been demanding more than double the amount’’, officials said, holding that the Aluva municipality, which owns the property, has already agreed to surrender it.
Officials said the district administration would be holding discussions regarding the take-over of a one-acre property for setting up the Edappally metro station. The district level purchase committee has approved a price of Rs. 31.60 lakh per cent though the land owner, a jewellery group, has been demanding a higher price.
The authority, however, is yet to clear the deadlock over the acquisition of 28 cents owned by a timber merchant near the Changampuzha Park and along the Seematti corridor.
Besides, about 0.26 hectares remain to be acquired near the South Railway Station.
Meanwhile, the uncertainty that dogged the widening of the Petta-Vyttila Road has been cleared with the State government issuing a draft declaration for its take-over. The plan to widen road for facilitating construction of the metro seeks to increase the road’s total width to 26 metres from the present 15 metres with a median width of four meters and carriage ways of 7.5 metres on either side.
It was on April 11, 2008, that the transport department had issued a notification on four-laning the stretch while the revised detailed project report prepared by the DMRC included it in its priority list.
