City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (CIDCO) has offered villagers an additional ₹500 per square feet for vacating their homes on the airport site as soon as possible. CIDCO officials said villagers with houses covering a minimum of 1,000 square feet would stand to earn a maximum of ₹5 lakh as per the incentive scheme.
Desperate measure
CIDCO has to hand over the site to airport developer GVK in June and has introduced the scheme with the aim of getting the land vacated at the earliest. As of now, the rate promised to villagers is ₹1,000 per square feet for vacating their houses. The CIDCO has now promised to pay an additional ₹500 per square feet to those vacating their homes by March 31, ₹300 to those who leave in April, and ₹100 in May. The scheme won’t be valid after May.
A CIDCO official said, “The villagers are expected not only to vacate their homes but also to get them demolished. To claim the incentive, the villagers have to approach us after razing their houses. We will then conduct a survey and hand over the money after verification. No incentive over and above the ₹1,000 per square feet will be given after May.”
Of the 3,000 families staying on the project site, 450 have already vacated their homes. The ₹16,700-crore airport project is being built on 1,160 hectares of land, of which 30 hectares are occupied by 10 villages comprising the 3,000 families. Around 25% of the work has been completed and land filling is in progress at the project site.
