Cuttack, Feb. 25: A two-year-old controversy over eviction of merchants from Malgodown here has come back to life with the traders filing representations to East Coast Railway (ECoR) for rehabilitation at some other place.
The representations have been filed following directions issued by Orissa High Court on their petitions.
Malgodown has been home to more than 800 merchants, including wholesalers and sub-wholesalers, for over 90 years. It is the state's largest wholesale mandi (market) for essential commodities, spread over 25 acres. Eighty per cent of the land belongs to ECoR. The railway had been issuing trade licences for operations at Malgodown since 1925.
Pawan Kumar Agarwal, a 54-year-old trader said: "Sudden eviction without making alternative arrangements will hit the chain of trade in essential commodities right to retail traders in villages."
Another trader, Surendra Sahoo, 41, said: "It is the lifeline for more than 25,000 people, including traders, workers, labourers and transporters."
Daily wholesale transaction of essential commodities at Malgodown is estimated at Rs 100 crore.
The EcoR's decision to serve eviction notices to traders on February 13, 2015, asking them to vacate the land before March 31 that year, had sparked controversy. The notices were served to traders citing urgent requirement of land by the railway administration "for its own development work in public interest".
The controversy intensified with the Cuttack Chamber of Commerce meeting chief minister Naveen Patnaik to seek his intervention for withdrawal of the notice. Cuttack MP Bhartruhari Mahtab also submitted a written note to railway minister Suresh Prabhu and demanded its withdrawal. Later, the dispute reached the high court when aggrieved merchants filed several petitions.
The high court, on March 19, 2015, issued an interim stay on the ECoR's eviction notices and directed maintaining status quo until further orders. The case languished until the court disposed of several petitions recently.
"Of the 50 odd petitions, the high court has disposed of around 32 with identical orders," petitioners' counsel Satyaranjan Pati said today.
"Since the railway authority has a vast extant of land nearby, it should at least consider the case of the petitioner (a trader at Malgodown) to rehabilitate him at some other place," the single-judge bench of Justice Biswanath Rath directed, while disposing of a petition on February 13.
The court asked the traders to submit a detailed representation to ECoR, Khurda Road Division, indicating their "long continuance over the disputed land and using it for running" their livelihoo, within two weeks of the disposal of their petitions.
"The railway authority shall take a final decision thereon within a period of two weeks thereafter. For these four weeks, there shall be status quo in respect of the disputed property," Justice Rath said in the order.
