Oommen Chandy to chair meeting on land acquisition

Chief Minister Oommen Chandy will chair a meeting here next week to take stock of the situation vis-à-vis the process of land acquisition for widening the Mananchira-Vellimadukunnu road in the city.

Official sources said that the Minister for Public Works V.K. Ebrahim Kunju would participate in the meeting. The Revenue Department was also gearing up to submit recommendations of the six District Level Purchase Committee (DLPC) meetings held in the last couple of months.

Subsequently, a five-member State-level Empowered Committee, chaired by the Chief Secretary, would take a final call on the value of land fixed for the six stretches of the 8.4-km Mananchira-Vellimadukunnu road on the NH No.212. Only then, the funds for the acquisition of land would be released for converting the narrow artery into a four-lane highway.

The DLPC recommendations should have been submitted in October. As of now, 385 of the 587 land owners had given their letter of consent to the Tahsildar (Land Acquisition), officials said. They said the State government now had plans to forcibly take over the land from owners who were refusing to part with their property. Properties having no proper title deeds would also be taken over by the government.

The DLPC fixed property rates between Rs.12 lakh and Rs.21 lakh per cent depending on the market value though the land owners had demanded unreasonably high rates, the officials said. The forcibly taken over property would be valued at a lesser amount.

Nearly 7.36 hectares of land would be required for widening the road. Of this, the government owned three acres of land and the remaining was with private individuals.

Estimate

The State government had fixed an estimate of Rs.450 crore for acquiring the land, the officials said. The Revenue Department expected the government to release Rs.100 crore as first tranche of the fund. Any delay on the part of the government to release the amount would result in the whole exercise getting sabotaged.

Several people with vested interests were trying to torpedo the project, officials said.