Bhubaneswar, April 22: The municipal corporation will build gymnasium-cum-community centres in various wards of the city in order to keep residents fit and healthy.

One of these facilities will come up in ward No. 12 at Gadakana at an estimated cost of Rs 20 lakh. The proposed gym-cum-community centre will come up on 0.244 acres near the guesthouse of Mahanadi Coalfields Limited. After land identification, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation has written a letter to the general administration department for land alienation.

According to the administrative practice, the general administration department is the owner of all government land across the city. After land identification, an organisation has to write to the general administration to make it available for the purpose.

In February, the corporation authorities had adopted a budget of Rs 500.70 crore. Of this, Rs 70 lakh is to be made annually available to each ward, and out of this, a councillor is supposed to spend at Rs 15 lakh on people-centric projects such as community centres or parks. If a project remains unfinished, the balance amount would be carried forward to the next year.

Local councillor Sanjay Kumar Sethy said: "Development of the civic infrastructure such as roads and drains has become usual things for all councillors. But this year, with specific provision for parks, community centres or gyms, I have taken special steps to identify available government land and process it for alienation from the general administration."

Though Sethy has identified two plots - a small one for a gym-cum-community hall and a big one for a marriage mandap - he preferred to concentrate more on the smaller one.

"It has become too difficult to get government land from the general administration, and in case of land for our own corporation office building, the difficulty becomes more evident. For this, I have done all the follow-up measures for the alienation of the 0.244 acres for the gym-cum-community centre," he said.

Deputy commissioner-cum-public relation officer of the civic body Srimanta Mishra said: "We are getting proposals from many councillors, but the land availability has become a major concern. There are at least 15 such proposals pending with us."

Gadakana resident Madan Majhi, who is also a former councillor, said: "Our ward remains neglected always though it has got 17 colonies, and for that, both gym-cum-community centre and a marriage mandap are necessary."

"Major colonies such as Samanta Vihar, Press Colony, New Government Colony, Railway Colony, Sainik School, Gajapati Nagar, Lakshmi Vihar, Institute of Physics, Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology, Doordarshan, Survey of India, Ignou, Coal India, 7th battalion are within the ward and have no community center or marriage mandap by the civic body," he said.