Mangaluru: Deputy Commissioner Dr Jagadeesh and Mangaluru South Constituency MLA J R Lobo along with the Commissioner of Mangaluru City Corporation, Mohammed Nazir visited and inspected the site for the proposed bus stand at Pumpwell on Saturday, September 3.
The visit of the authorities is a follow up of a meeting chaired in May 2016 by District In-charge Minister Ramanath Rai. It was then decided in the meeting that a modern bus stand with civic amenities would be constructed under public-private-partnership (PPP) mode at the national level. The issue of acquiring the required land still persists.
DC Jagadeesh after taking over office was appraised of the issue of acquiring a patch of 136 cents of land having six houses and another patch of 19 cents having a house close to the site reserved for the project. It was decided in the meeting that if the land was to be acquired, the market rate of the property should be paid to the owners. But no final decision was taken on acquiring the land in the meeting. Hence, the DC Jagadeesh along with MLA J R Lobo and others inspected entire site including the patch of land that is likely to be acquired.
Though the DC held a face to face interaction with the families living on the land, he proposed to call a meeting in which persons who are likely to lose their land can express their interest and decide whether to give or keep their land.
The DC invited the land owners and lease holders of the land to the meeting where they could find an amicable solution. The DC also told the land owners, that if they wouldn’t give their land, they would continue to dwell in the middle of a busy bus stand with heavy movement of buses, and hence requested them to consider the request.
Ravindranath and Chitra among a few more, who are the landlords, said they were dwelling there from about 60 years. Chitra said that they have just 34 cents left and they have already given away close to 3 acres for the project. The government has come to take away the leftover land, she said. The residents also pointed out, that there is a big storm water drain that is flowing around the proposed bus stand project.
Ever since the government acquired about seven acres of land for the project about five years ago, the proposal has not made any major headway except holding of meetings and concept discussions.
The actual requirement of the corporation was to park 160 buses. A consultant of the corporation had submitted the plan taking into account the availability of only 4.5 acre land. In which, only 66 buses could be parked in a two-storeyed bus stand. The Consultant, I-deck has given Rs. 77.67 crore and Rs. 134.46 crore as options for the cost of the project.
