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| Ugly to lovely: The dirty Button Talab in Doranda and dilapidated Jaipal Singh Stadium on Kutchery Road are two of the Ranchi landmarks on the civic body’s facelift list. Also on the revamp radar are three old parks in the capital. Pictures by Hardeep Singh |
Where there is money, there is makeover.
Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) has prepared a detailed Rs 19.89-crore proposal for the capital’s facelift that includes dredging and beautification of water bodies, revamp of parks, stadiums and roads and installation of LED streetlights along some stretches.
RMC chief executive officer Dipankar Panda, who has envisioned the project, said the proposal file seeking financial aid had been sent to the urban development department for approval a week ago.
The civic body has under its jurisdiction 30 ponds and lakes that will be de-silted and beautified with an investment of Rs 2 crore. Ranchi Lake, the largest of them all and located in the heart of the city, will be dredged and given a boundary wall for Rs 2.17 crore.
Located on a plateau 2,140ft above the sea level, the capital had more than 200 water bodies even a few decades ago. These worked as natural rainwater harvesters, which in turn maintained the water table. However, unplanned growth of the city has annihilated many of them today.
In April 2012, The Telegraph had carried a report on the pitiable condition of the existing water bodies, with residents and ward commissioners calling for urgent revival. The time has, finally, come.
Water bodies apart, the multi-crore plan includes revamp of the Jaipal Singh Stadium, a building of almost heritage value, at an estimated cost of Rs 3.38 crore. Currently, the stadium is in bad shape with a broken boundary and a crumbling administrative building. The civic body not only plans to repair the building and make an indoor stadium, it also wants to create a shopping area on the premises to rehabilitate street vendors.
“The RMC wants its existing parks to look beautiful. It will seek a corpus of Rs 2 crore for Children’s Park and Dada Dadi Park in Morabadi and Zakir Hussain Park near Raj Bhavan. Sri Krishna Singh Park in Doranda has already been given a facelift by the forest department,” said a civic official.
Incidentally, on January 25, the governor had laid the foundation for six new RMC parks, which will come up with an investment of Rs 1.53 crore.
Beautification of ponds, parks and the stadium apart, the civic body also wants to give a facelift to Birsa Munda Raj Marg — popularly known as Harmu Road — by setting up drains and footpaths from Ratu Road New Market junction to Bharat Mata Chowk, a distance of 2.5km.
“This road is an important one and the footpath, which will have railings too, will ensure safety of pedestrians. We have sought Rs 3.17 crore for the job,” Panda said.
The civic body further plans to improve drainage along the road from Ranchi Lake to Marwari College, a distance of 1.5km. This sub-project will cost Rs 41 lakh.
“Underground cabling along some important roads and installing LED streetlights will require another Rs 5 crore,” Panda summed it up.
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