Officials demolish an encroachment along the Sishu Bhavan-New Airport Square stretch in Bhubaneswar on Tuesday. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, July 8: A demolition drive along the Sishu Bhavan-New Airport Road, a VIP area, today sent out a message to residents that encroachment on government land would not be tolerated at any cost irrespective of the encroachers’ profile.

Enforcement officials of the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA), Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) and the general administration department (GAD) began the drive around 10am and continued till 6pm, demolishing 22 structures encroaching on the land earmarked for the road expansion at Forest Park.

The road widening on this stretch was hanging fire as the majority of landowners in the area had encroached on it by extending their boundary walls.

Most of them being retired bureaucrats and powerful persons were resisting the move to remove the encroachment.

The encroachment of land in the area had taken place when the GAD, in the 70s, had allowed them temporary possession of the land in front of their houses to plant trees. But taking advantage of this, many of them constructed boundary walls illegally.

The demolition drive was earlier scheduled on July 1, but it was shifted to July 8 as many residents requested the GAD to give time to shift the walls according to the “demarcation marks”.

In September last year, a joint survey team of the BMC and the GAD officials had put yellow marks on the boundary walls of houses, which were exceeding the limits. But only one of the landowners shifted his boundary wall on his own on that day. Subsequently, several others also shifted their walls. However, the problem still persisted.

In another development, the public works department (PWD) had floated a tender to widen the 10 to 12 metres wide road. The 1.1-km stretch will now be widened to 20 metres. This will make the a four-lane one with a median and street lights.

Assistant engineer of the PWD Debendra Behera said: “The tender process will be executed within three months and around Rs 4 crore will be required to widen the road.”

The Telegraph, in February 2012, first brought the issue to the fore and reported how the road expansion was not getting any headway as a powerful lobby was behind the move to stall the process.

Enforcement officer of the BDA Debaprasad Dash said: “Several conscious citizens on the stretch had shifted their walls, but we found structures erected after the BMC and the GAD officials had put yellow marks on their walls in last September. We cannot spare them who have no respect for the rule of the land.”

However, while the enforcement officials executed the drive with three excavators, the absence of senior PWD officials was marked with suspicion. “Had the PWD engineers engaged more private excavators, the demolition exercise would have been over by 3pm,” said an enforcement official.

The demolition took more time as during the execution one excavator, owned by the BDA, broke down. Later, the work was carried out with two remaining excavators.