Illegal premises razed,DDA clears Games road

On Wednesday afternoon,demolition trucks and teams rolled into the area and brought down a sports complex and several imposing bungalows. There were seven in total,which were let out to diplomats from Pakistan and Australia,DDA officials said. Two of them were still occupied on Wednesday.

Officials said the buildings came up 15 to 20 years ago without proper permits. The sports complex,called the Shanti Sports Club,had a swimming pool,a badminton court,a tennis court and a cricket field.

The duplex bungalows were pretty,each overlooking well-manicured,lush green lawns hemmed in by winding gravel roads. The area also has a small temple,inaugurated in 1997 by late chief minister Sahib Singh Verma.

“Even though the land was under litigation,Khosla kept on building on it,” a DDA official said. He added the new road coming up would directly link the Nelson Mandela Road and the Mahipalpur-Mehrauli Road. “The deadline is March 2010. We have to start the work immediately,” the official said.

The DDA is building a housing project nearby,behind the D-7 location where the demolitions took place on Wednesday. These furnished service apartments will be let out to visitors for a fee during the Commonwealth Games,officials said,adding the new road will provide better accessibility to the housing complex.

The development agency has also been on a major demolishing spree in the last few months. It recently demolished a building on a 25-acre plot in Maidangarhi near the IGNOU campus.