Naik auditorium to finally come up on PDKV land

NAGPUR: The government has finally chosen PDKV land that at present has a crumbling, half-built farmers’ hostel on North Ambazari Road to build 1200 seat Vasantrao Naik auditorium. The present structure would be incorporated into the auditorium complex. Three different sites were considered for the auditorium earlier and each found unsuitable for different reasons.
A meeting was held at the divisional commissioner’s office on Tuesday in this regard in the presence of commissioner Anoop Kumar, district collector Sachin Kurve, NIT chairman Deepak Mhaisekar and PDKV vice-chancellor Ravi Prakash Dani.The government officials are learnt to have told PDKV V-C that the NIT would be using Rs20 crore funds it got from the state government for making the auditorium.
A joint management committee would be formed with members of the state government, NIT officials and university for day-to-day management of the facility. The ownership and possession will remain with the PDKV but university has effectively lost the land and facility as it will basically be a public facility. A source in the divisional commissioner’s office told TOI the auditorium will be a ‘premier complex of Nagpur’ and will also be available to public for holding programmes.
“Since the land belongs to the PDKV and the existing structure of auditorium has been built using funds from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) since 2007, the government will neither snatch ownership of the auditorium nor will it acquire the land. PDKV will have the privilege of getting the auditorium for its utilization as and when it wants. It will certainly not be an extended campus of PDKV,” said an official from divisional commissioner’s office.
The university has not been given detailed terms and conditions and it too has not given its formal nod. It will be putting up the proposal before its Executive Council (EC). The decision of EC will be communicated to divisional commissioner’s office. If the EC agrees, the joint management committee will be formed for running the auditorium.
Dani told TOI the auditorium will be run on a turnkey basis by PDKV and the income from it would also accrue to the university. “We will discuss the issue in the EC and the land protection committee. There will be no compromise on ownership,” the V-C said.
Interestingly, the university had got the auditorium as a gift from then Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar. He had announced Rs5 crore as centenary gift to the College of Agriculture, Nagpur. The university messed up the project right from the beginning by starting construction without taking sanction from the Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC).
The work was also illegal as it was on a heritage land marked as open space. This led to Bombay High Court bench taking a suo motu cognizance and ordering demolition of the structure. The case later went to the Supreme Court (SC). SC referred the matter back to the government with an advice to consider regularising the construction. NMC and NIT regularized the project last year when the university agreed to give land for 24-metre-wide road from inside the university premises between Nagpur University library and the agriculture college, a 12m-wide road from near Cinemax to Mor Bhavan bus stop and 7 acres for bus stop.
The present situation arose when university approached the state government for funds to complete the project.