20.12.08

Yamuna Expressway snippets

The last bastion of protest against the Rs 2,250-crore, 165-km long, 6-lane access controlled Yamuna Expressway Project, which would connect Noida to Agra, has fallen.Farmers of 22 villages of Gautam Buddha Nagar, who made roads difficult for the expressway, have agreed to the stateadministration’scompensation package, which is working out to be roughly Rs 80 lakh for every hectare. Apart from the 30-odd km of land that falls in the Gautam Buddha Nagar (GB Nagar) district, the Yamuna Expressway Authority (YEA)already has physical possession of the remaining 135 km of land spread over Aligarh, Hathras, Agra and Mathura districts and almost 90 % of Rs 400 crore compensation package has been disbursed. Officials closely associated with the project said with the acquisition of the remaining 298 hectare from GB Nagar, which is expected to be completed by the end of this month, the entire tract of land would be in the hands of the developers and work on it would get underway on a war-footing.However, the possibility of the project being completed in time for handling the Commonwealth Games rush in 2010 seems remote. “Since work on the project has majorly suffered due to the protests by farmers in parting with their lands, the developers have requested the government to relax the deadline of completing the project by another three years,” said an official, adding that though the state-of-the art, automated machinery from Germany has been pumped into service for the project, meeting the 2010 deadline looks remote.“The earthwork and grubbing on the entire tract, itself, would take a year and a half and after that raising the level of the earth by two metre and then laying it with concrete and giving it finishing touches would need at least another 3 years. That is the reason that the developers have asked for an extension,”he added. While reviewing the progress of the project,which is being implemented on a build-operate-transfer basis by the concessionaire Jaiprakash Associates in Lucknow, the government referred the developers’ request for relaxing the deadline to a committee headed by GM Planning,which would examine the case and put up its report by the end of the month.It may be mentioned that the delay in reaching a consensus with the farmers was the outcome of the sudden spiraling of property prices in the area. Though,there have been wide spread protests by the farmers, who were demanding higher prices in lieu of their fertile lands, the government on its part had issued strict orders to the district magistrates of all the concerned districts that a situation of strife had prevented at all costs and no force was to be used.Interestingly, the compensation doled out to the farmers of GB Nagar stands out to be the highest among all the districts.While officials are quick to defend this,stating that this is the locational advantage of being nearer to the national capital, it remains to be seen how farmers of other districts, who were already alleging that injustice has been done to them and were demanding a compensation package comparable to that which will be offered to the farmers of GB Nagar,would react to this.

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