Bhubaneswar: High drama ensued on Saturday when the government's special eviction squad arrived to demolish illegal encroachments made by the Iskcon Temple authorities along the NH-5 as part of its drive to free the area from frequent waterlogging.
Iskcon authorities made last-ditch attempts to save the samadhi peeth (grave) of their religious guru by performing prayers in front of the bulldozers. Several devotees also started singing kirtan outside the structure that had come up near the storm water drain.
However, their prayers fell on deaf ears as the authorities, who received support from local residents, managed to go ahead with the drive. They persuaded the devotees to take away the samadhi, before razing the structure with bulldozers.
The disgruntled devotees resorted to pelting police with stone. The cops in retaliation resorted to mild lathicharge to disperse them.
The devotees claimed that the local residents, who were backing the demolition, pelted them with stones and alleged that the police were mute spectators. However, a witness said the devotees were responsible for the tension, and the violence that ensued. Two development authority officials and an onlooker were injured, and one of the four bulldozers that were engaged in the operation got damaged. The authority has lodged an FIR against the temple authorities at Nayapalli police station.
The temple authorities alleged that the government had not provided them enough time to shift the samadhi peeth. A show cause notice was issued to the temple only two days ago on July 25, a temple official said.
The samadhi's location near the drain caused problems for civic officials in conducting periodic cleanings of the storm water channel, resulting in waterlogging on the highway as well as at Nayapalli.
"They failed to provide satisfactory reasons for the encroachment," said the authority's liaison officer Subhranshu Sekhar Mohanty.
During Saturday's drive, two tin-shed houses, a thatched house with the tomb inside, a 50ft-long boundary wall of the Iskcon Temple, three cabins, five signboards, a bamboo shed hotel and an iron gate were razed.
The authorities also dug up nearly 4,500sqft of tiled pavement that was used as a parking space in front of Krishna Plaza.
Flash floods are a regular occurrence in the area, mainly in front of the Iskcon Temple, after even a brief spell of rain. The waterlogging, however, became unbearable this time as rainwater clogged and reached at least 4ft high, leaving hundreds of people and vehicles stranded.
Initially, the reason for the waterlogging was attributed to the drainage system in the area that was aggravated by the construction of the flyover by the National Highways Authority of India. Later, the civic body's drainage division revealed that rampant encroachments over the drain along the highway were the reason behind frequent waterlogging.
A sources said similar steps would be taken against the Presidency Hotel, located adjacent to the Iskcon Temple. The hotel authorities have allegedly set up parking spaces for visitors, encroaching on the drain and government land on the national highway. "We are not going to spare anyone," said mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.
Members of the Yuva Odisha, a social organisation, began an indefinite hunger strike on Saturday to demand permanent solution to waterlogging at Nayapalli. "We will not going to call off our hunger strike unless the problems are resolved," said its city president Arjun Behera.
The organisation's state president, Upendra Bhanj, who was also present at the strike, said the authorities had rightly demolished parts of the temple and this should continue to stop recurrence of waterlogging in the area. "There is a lot to do to resolve the waterlogging condition in this area," he said.
