Bhubaneswar: The civic body is staring in the face of failure in its attempt to clear encroachments around Kalinga Stadium ahead of the Men's Hockey World Cup here in November.

The state government has entrusted the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation with removing the squatters around for smooth conduct of the tournament.

Accordingly, the civic body identified a slum settlement near Jayadev Vihar Square and a temple near the stadium's gate No. 9 for removal, setting a deadline of March to complete the job. However, it is nowhere near accomplishing the task.

This failure has triggered apprehensions that the city will give a bad impression to the thousands of visitors and foreign delegates who will arrive for the event. "The stadium's extravagant interior cannot hide the reality of the exterior," said Jayanti Mishra, a visitor to the stadium.

Encroachment is rampant near Jayadev Vihar Square, the gateway to the stadium, where the civic body has identified 250 families that need to be rehabilitated before demolition. The civic body faces a bigger challenge in shifting the temple as local residents showed resentment with the plan.

"We have lived here for decades and we are not going to leave until we are rehabilitated properly. We will not allow them to demolish the temple since it is the only place of worship for us," said Rati Kanta Jena, a slum-dweller here.

The International Hockey Federation (FIH) has already expressed concern over the temple's location and asked the authorities to shift it since a new stand is being planned on the site. "We need to demolish the temple to construct the west stand in order to increase the seating capacity," said a sports department official.

The civic body made similar attempts to rehabilitate the slum-dwellers and demolish the settlements ahead of the Asian Athletics Championship last July. The administration had than demolished 22 houses and distributed Rs 10,000 to each houseshold for rehabilitation.

However, soon after the event, the encroachers returned and built new homes with the administration as mute spectators.

"How could we build a house in the city with a mere Rs 10,000? We decided and get back to our own place. We are not going to leave it," said another slum-dweller Chidananda Moharana.

Sources said the civic body has put a proposal before the government to sanction Rs 13.2 crore to build homes for the evicted families.

"We have put the proposal before the government. Once it is sanctioned, we will start building another affordable housing complex for the slum-dwellers. We will rehabilitate them in our transit house and then go for demolition," said mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.