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The under-construction Adityapur-Kandra road on Tuesday. (Animesh Sengupta)
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An altercation has begun between the Jharkhand State Housing Board and the road construction department over acquisition of land for four-laning of the 15km Adityapur-Kandra stretch after residents on Monday thwarted officials from marking areas for widening work.
Owners of houses — to the left of the road leading to Kandra — fumed when they found officials of IL&FS, the construction firm carrying out four-laning work, trying to demarcate land within their residential plots. The IL&FS officials also asked house owners to part with portions of their land facing the road to make way for the project.
But residents, who had bought their homes from the housing board much earlier, rallied together and prevented the officials from going ahead with their work. A delegation also met housing board executive engineer Vinod Kumar on Tuesday. They sought assurances that their residential premises would remain unaffected by the project.
Kumar confirmed that over 50 house owners had approached him, adding that the board had built the units in 1962-63 “when there was no pucca road between Adityapur and Kandra”. “How can the road construction department acquire a portion of the land that falls on residential premises belonging to the housing board?” he said.
Kumar added, “This is unprecedented for me and also the allottees, who were asked to part with portions of their land for the road project. I will send a report to the deputy commissioner of Seraikela-Kharsawan seeking necessary action.” The executive engineer clarified that, if required, the housing board could free tracts of land that it owned across the road.
Meanwhile, executive engineer (road construction) Sanjay Kumar Singh argued that the housing board might have built the houses, but his department had acquired 120-feet-wide land along Adityapur-Kandra stretch in 1970.
“Earlier, the width of the Adityapur-Kandra road was just 70ft, therefore we did not have to disturb people who had set up their houses or businesses along the road. But we want to take possession of our land now,” he said, adding that the dispute would be resolved with the deputy commissioner’s intervention.
K. Srinivasan, acting Seraikela-Kharsawan DC, said they would first inspect relevant documents of either parties to determine whether the land in question was government-owned and, if yes, which government wing it belonged to.
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