State government decides to acquire land for national highway

KOLKATA: The state government after initial hiccups decided to acquire land and construct the stretch of NH34 between Barasat and Krishnanagar. This, if done, will be the first lad acquisition of the Mamata Banerjee government after she came to power for the second time. The decision comes after the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) expressed their inability to lift major portion of encroachment in this 84.317 km stretch.
According to state government officials the NHAI that was supposed to complete the work by February 2015 informed the state government that they were unable to complete this stretch because only 76.1395 hectre of land of the 197.41 hectre required for the construction of the stretch could be acquired.The rest 121.27 hectre was encumbrance land that could not be acquired.
“In North 24 parganas 28.91 hectre and in Nadai 92.35 hetre could not be acquired because of the encroachment. Though the NHAI would be constructing the rest 342 kilometres of NH34 but could not make any progress in this 84.317 km stretch because of encroachment. In a recent order, the state government asked all departments to demarcate its land and erect fences, if required, to keep encroachers at bay. The chief minister is believed to have told officials during a meeting in Alipurduar in the last week of June that she would not tolerate encroachment hurdles to development projects, an official said. The PWD department will be doing the construction work in this particular stretch after the land acquisition process is complete,” a state government official said.
When asked how the government would acquire land when it is policy wise against forceful land acquisition process then how, a senior officer of the land department said, “The government is against forceful acquisition but it is not against land acquisition. State government has their own method of compensation where apart from market price of the land, 100 percent solatium will be given. Apart from that the government can also think of different kind of compensating process. We will approach on case to case basis. It might take some time but we are hopeful that we will be able to sort out the problem”.
“Apart from land acquisition the state government has also decided to make this stretch into a six lane highway instead of four lane highway as designed by the national highway authority of India. For this widening process we might need some extra land and that will also be estimated,” the officer said. When asked whether this decision will match the match the National High Development Project specification, the officer said, “This are in a nascent stage and we will sort it out with the NHAI”.
Project Details:
Total length of NH34 – Kolkata to Dalkhola - 443.5 km
Encroached area – Barasat to Krishnanagr – 84.317 km.
Total land required for the widening of the stretch – 197.41 hectares
Acquired so far- 76.13 hectares
Remaining – 121.27 hectares
Break up of the land :
Land --North 24 Parganas / Nadia
Required – 40.18/ 157.22
Acquired – 11.26/ 64.87
Remaining – 28.91/ 92.35
Basic Details :
Total Project Cost : Rs. 980.00 Crore
Date of Commencement: 07-08-2012
Construction Period : 910 Days
Supposed to be completed : 02-02-2015