The District Administration has initiated the process of disbursing money as part of land acquisition for widening of Old Bhandara Road. The project is stalled since last 26 years. As of now, the office of Sub Divisional Officer (SDO) has submitted the challan at Treasury for depositing the claim amount in the accounts of 42 property owners in the first phase. Thereafter, 72 more accounts will be credited with the compensation as per the rules, said SDO Suresh Bagle. As per the decision by Revenue authorities, the compensation was to be distributed from December 3 onwards. Prior to that, from November 27 onwards, authorities accepted documents of properties identified for acquisition as part of the process to disburse the compensation.

 

However, some procedures remained to be completed as to verification and hence, the delay in disbursing the compensation of Rs 60 crore. Now Treasury will send the challan to RBI, which will then credit the amount in property owners’ account within next two days. There are, in total, 523 properties whose land is needed to widening of the Old Bhandara Road as part of move to decongest the old city area. It now houses the bustling wholesale market. Bagle said, in many properties, there are multiple claimants and the families are yet to decide as to division of compensation. Therefore, the administration is right now busy scrutinising the documents submitted by property owners, matching the same against official records to avoid later complications.

 

Bagle said that, the administration has decided to wait for 30 days for the remaining private property owners to settle their differences. In case, they fail to reconcile the matter, the compensation amount will be deposited with the authority. As to Government-owned properties, the officer said, the matter of compensation would arise only if the lease is renewed and same was duly presented to them. In case, the lease is not renewed, the question of compensation would not arise and these properties would be taken over by the administration. From the 523 properties on the Old Bhandara Road, 15 are owned by Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC), 2 are of Nagpur Improvement Trust (NIT) and 58 are owned by various organisations of Maharashtra Government.

 

These properties were given on lease years back and many of them have changed hands multiple times and hence, for authorities, it’s going to be a Herculean task to acquire them. Bhushan Dadwe, Convenor, Madhya Nagpur Vikas Aghadi, said the citizens’ patience is running thin as the delay of 26 years for road widening is too much to bear. The Government needs to speed up the acquisition and start the widening. He, in fact, questioned the dilly-dallying tactics of NMC administration over stalled work in Mominpura-Hansapuri stretch where the properties have already been acquired and the necessary land is already available for widening. Yet, the contractor has not started the concretisation work in the given stretch and wondered what the civic administration was doing?