Revenue officials will survey the land around LuLu Mall, Edappally, including the Edappally canal, following a request from the Kochi Metro Rail Limited (KMRL).
A survey team will be constituted shortly for this purpose. Land records will be gathered from the offices concerned for the survey and it will take a week for the survey to begin, said a revenue official.
At the same time, both the Kalamassery municipality and the Kochi Corporation maintained that there was no encroachment on the land.
Incidentally, the chief revenue officer of the KMRL had written to the secretaries of the Kochi Corporation and Kalamassery municipality in May last year for initiating “urgent steps to stop the construction work and to evict the encroachment” on the canal puramboke near LuLu Mall at Edappally junction.”
In his letter, the official of the KMRL had pointed out that “construction works on the sides of the canal near LuLu mall are in progress.”
“The canal and canal puramboke are vested with the local bodies. The land will be required for the Kochi Metro Rail project and the constructions on both sides of the canal near LuLu mall is to be prevented,” the letter demanded. According to Ajit V. Patil, Secretary of the Kochi Corporation, the civic body had confirmed that there was no encroachment on the land. Building inspectors of the corporation had carried out assessments at the site, in the presence of the taluk surveyor even before receiving the letter from the KMRL. It was ascertained that there was no encroachments, Mr. Patil said.
The Secretary of the Kalamassery municipality too arrived at a similar conclusion last year.
Referring to the request from the KMRL, the Secretary had reported that the compound wall of the mall was constructed within the boundary stones fixed by the taluk surveyor.
