Eviction drive on near NH-5 at Saheed Nagar in Bhubaneswar on Thursday. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Aug. 7: The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) today conducted a demolition drive on the Saheed Nagar side of NH-5, along with the city enforcement monitoring committee, to expedite construction of the flyover at Rasulgarh.

The drive between Vani Vihar and Rasulgarh Square was carried out to remove slums and expedite the road expansion job.

Though authorities of the NHAI decided to provide compensation of Rs 18,000 to each evicted family on humanitarian grounds, a group of slum dwellers had staged a protest on the NH for around 15 minutes, burning tyres on the road and affecting vehicular movement. Police, however, stepped in and removed the blockade within no time to restore the traffic flow.

In the past, the NHAI was criticised as the construction of overbridges was lingering. Last year, even the state government instructed the authorities to finish the works as soon as possible.

Accordingly, the NHAI has finished the overbridges at Vani Vihar and Acharya Vihar, but at Rasulgarh, the work had been pending due to encroachment.

After officials of the NHAI and Shree Jagannath Expressways Private Limited, the private body undertaking the NH expansion work, identified the encroachments in a survey, the Bhubaneswar Development Authority was called upon to assist in the eviction drive. The development authority is the nodal agency of the monitoring committee that carries out enforcement drives in the city.

As many as 78 houses were identified in two slums, where 51 families belonged to Telugu basti and 27 houses belonged to the third gender members. Both the slums stood along railway tracks.

Retired Colonel George Mathews, who is the project director of the private company, said work on the overbridge at Rasulgarh had been going on. But, the bridge’s slope that would run for around 400 metres towards Vani Vihar Square could not be completed due to non-availability of land to build service roads for vehicular movement, he said. Besides, there is also a plan for the entire NH to be made six-lane. On this particular stretch, the road remains four-lane. “We got to know that there had been 22 metres of land belonging to the NHAI on this side of the road. Accordingly, we conducted a survey and it was decided to remove the slum for road expansion,” said Mathew.

The NHAI would build another lane of the railway overbridge at this spot — for which poles have been erected. But, space crunch hampered the construction. Mathew said that though the government land encroachers were not given compensation, they had paid some amount to the ousted, so that they could reside elsewhere till the government provided them houses under the Rajiv Awas Yojana.

Officials of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation were also present to identify the families that were provided with the compensation. Three platoons of police were present to control crowd.