Cuttack, Nov. 20: The district administration is leaving no stone unturned to ensure a successful and incident-free Bali yatra, which will begin on November 25.
District administration officials recently conducted a joint inspection of the venue with police to review the ongoing infrastructure development. The inspection was conducted to earmark various entry and exit points, stall locations, spots for CCTV installation and police aide posts.
"We have asked the district administration to keep adequate space between kiosks in different rows and make some changes at the entry and exit points," said deputy commissioner of police Sanjeev Arora.
The administration has decided to form a joint eviction squad to ensure that traders do not encroach on the space between kiosks to display or sell their products.
Earlier, the bulk of the space meant for visitors' movement was encroached upon by the small traders, causing crowd regulation problems. The administration has also set a target to collect Rs 70 lakh revenue from land cess and auction of cycle stand.
Though there has been no hike in the land rent that has been fixed at Rs 22 per sqft, the administration is hopeful of generating more income as the event will be held on 15,000sqft of extra land this year.
"Already, over 800 vendors have booked space to set up kiosks at Bali yatra, and we are hopeful that this time around 1,500 kiosks will be set up against 1,400 kiosks last year," said tehsildar Abani Patnaik.
He said vendors, who had set up kiosks last year, would be preferred to new applicants. They can book space according to their requirement till November 24, while the remaining space would be allotted to new applicants.
The revenue administration and the Cuttack Municipal Corporation have set up two temporary offices to facilitate the formalities for setting up the kiosks. "We are getting nearly 25 per cent of the revenue generated from the sale of space, and this time, we hope to collect Rs 40 lakh as revenue against Rs 38 lakh last year," said Bikash Behera, chairman of the corporation's standing committee on licence.
