The building at Jayadev Vihar which BDA demolition squad members could not raze because of local protest and lack of police support. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, March 5: The urban development authority’s demolition drive in the city hits yet another hurdle with the model code of conduct coming into force for the upcoming Parliament elections.

It is apprehended that the Bhubaneswar Development Authority’s (BDA) demolition drives will not be able to make any headway in the coming two months because of the model code of conduct for the upcoming polls and lack of law enforcement personnel.

Earlier, the BDA demolition drives have been stalled on several occasions because of lack of police force.

Very recently, a multi-storey building could not be demolished at Jayadev Vihar because of lack of law enforcement personnel.

The demolition process started on a four-storey building near a leading city hotel on Monday. But it could not progress yesterday because of lack of police force.

On January 20, the BDA enforcement officials could not carry out demolition of illegal temples in Chandrasekharpur because of lack of law enforcement personnel.

Again on February 25, some 1,000 persons resisted a BDA squad as the development body officials went to remove encroachments from a 20-acre government land near Kanyashram at Chandrasekharpur.

In case of the four-storey illegal structure near Jaydev Vihar, when the BDA enforcement squad reached the spot early in yesterday morning, several women from nearby Salia Sahi blocked their way and forced the team to stop work.

“We immediately informed the police. But the inspector in charge of the local police station said he would not be able to provide force. As the women continued to protest, we had no other option but to return around 1pm. Without any police support, we do not want to become a laughing stock in the eye of the general public,’’ said an enforcement official of the development authority.

“If the law enforcing agencies cannot support us, why should we risk to involve ourselves in trouble,” asked a senior BDA official.

On the other hand, a senior official in the police commissioner’s office told The Telegraph: “We had categorically informed the BDA enforcement wing officials that the arrangement for force was done only for Monday for the Jaydev Vihar building demolition. As demolition of a multi-storey structure takes more than a day, the BDA officials should have requisitioned for force for the subsequent days as well. It is purely their lookout and they cannot blame us as we are hard-pressed with many other law and order issues.”

On the other hand, the 10-member Odisha State Striking Force, which comprises retired armed personnel who assist the BDA demolition squad, has no policing power.

In another case, the much-awaited use of implosion technology to facilitate controlled demolition of illegal structures in association with an expert from Indore is yet to be used in the city as the police have to take a call on permitting the method here.

The technology is already being used in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra to bring down illegal structures without any damage to nearby buildings.