Airport expansion: Talks on land pricing fail to take off

COIMBATORE: The talks between the district collectorate and residents of G K Nagar failed on Tuesday, as the latter refused to accept the price fixed by officials to acquire their land. While officials claimed they are offering almost 50% more than the guideline value, residents say the price offered is still just a third of the prevailing land rates in the area.
In order to expand the airport runway, the government needs to acquire 461.90 acres of land from residents in the neighbouring areas and 134.32 acres from defence authorities.
The district revenue officer (DRO), in charge of land acquisition, conducted a meeting with residents of G K Nagar, College Nagar and Kalapatti to negotiate the price for their land. “We are conducting private negotiations with residents, so we can offer a price that is acceptable for all residents,” S Gunashekharan, the DRO in charge of the project said.
“According to government rules, we have published all their land survey numbers in the government gazette for land acquisition, which means the land already belongs to us,” he said. “Though we are allowed to offer only the guideline value of the land, we are offering them 150% of our initial offer price, as compensation,” he said.
However, the residents are unhappy with the price offered. They said the present land prices are thrice of the guideline value and the price quoted by the authorities is unfair. “The guideline value of the land is around 430 per sqft and they’ve offered us 500 per sqft. Along with the solatium, the total comes to 750 per sqft. Nevertheless, they clearly know that the present land value is around 2,300 per sqft,” said S Raghu, a resident who owns three plots of 5.5 cents each in GK Nagar explained.
“So they are offering around 3.23 lakh for a cent of land, which actually costs 10 lakh,” he said. Adding “With this price, we can’t buy another piece of land or a house anywhere within the corporation limits.”
Due to this situation, the residents on Tuesday rejected the offer made by the government. “The district committee is allowed to increase the price only up to 150%. But, since the residents are demanding an increase of more than 200%, only the state-level committee can decide,” Gunashekharan said. “We have asked the residents to give us their reasons for rejecting the offer in writing,” he added.
Speaking about the failure of the negotiation, Raghu said, “The government is trying to corner us with this unfair price. Many of us stand to lose more than 1 crore each if we accept their prices.”
Officials said they are offering a price which is 150% more than govt guideline value. But residents say that the price offered is unfair, as the going rate of the land is about 2,500 per sqft, whereas the govt has offered 750 per sqft