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The Gandhinagar administration on Thursday began a two-day demolition drive with the aim of clearing out approximately 700 properties, which are deemed illegal, on the banks of the Sabarmati river. By Thursday evening, officials said demolition of 400 properties had been completed.
The demolitions were carried out by the Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation (GMC) along with the Roads and Buildings (R&B) Department of the state government with assistance and protection from Gandhinagar police.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Gandhinagar Superintendent of Police (SP) Ravi Teja Vasamsetty said, “This is an area of 1 lakh square metres whose property valuation is in the Rs 1,000 crore range. There are around 700 illegal encroachments of which 400 have been removed today.”
About the type of encroachments, the SP said, “Around 90% are residential structures, some are semi-commercial establishments such as shops and a few are religious structures.”
Notably, out of the 1 lakh square metres, around 30,000 square metres of land belongs to the Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation (GMC) in Pethapur while a majority portion, around 70%, is with the R&B department.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Gandhinagar Municipal Commissioner JN Vaghela said, “In our 30,000 square metre portion alone, demolitions worth Rs 300 crore have been carried out. This has been encroached upon for the last 20-25 years. We used 18 machines, and around 250 staff members, besides police personnel, were involved in the demolition. However, there was no resistance from the people most of whom had moved out a day earlier.”
When asked about the procedure followed, Commissioner Vaghela said, “We gave everyone three notices over a period of two months and only then we began the demolitions. Also, we created psychological pressure by sternly telling them that they have to leave no matter what every time we visited the area. So, there was no protest. The work was completed by midday on our land.”
When asked about the timing of the demolition, the Commissioner said, “The demolition had been pending for years and currently, we were waiting for the monsoon season to get over and before the festive season of Navratri and Diwali begins. We don’t want to evict people either during the rains or festivals; so, we carried out the work around this time.”
When asked about the projects on the cleared land, Vaghela said, “The area from where we cleared the encroachments sits above the land demarcated for the Sabarmati Riverfront. We will now plan what to do in this area.”
Officials said that the residents who have been evicted are a “mixed type” and not from Pethapur village. “Going by the way they speak Hindi, they look like outsiders, perhaps from Bihar or Uttar Pradesh or other states. Though a few seemed to be from Banaskantha,” a government official told The Indian Express.
On the rehabilitation of evictees, he said, “We are yet to plan on that. Our first priority was clearing the encroachments.”
Notably, the current 11-km-long riverfront is all set to be extended by another 5.5 km in the Phase-2 of the project. It is ultimately planned to be 38.5 km in length, extending to Gandhinagar in seven phases.
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