The 60 year-old wholesale fruit market at Mechhua will be relocated at Ankurhati, in Howrah, in the next five years. A cooperative, newly-formed by various fruit and vegetable traders? organisations, has already started purchase of land for the new complex.

Officials at the trade hub on Tuesday revealed that steps were underway to relocate the market by 2010. ?We have already purchased 25 bighas. An estimated Rs 7.6 crore will go into acquiring the targeted 152 bighas for the new market,? said Md Sohrab, president of the Calcutta Fruit and Vegetable Society Ltd, the cooperative formed for the acquisition of land and setting up of the new complex, 20 km off Calcutta. Sohrab is also president of Mechhua Fruit Merchants? Association.

The total investment in the project will be to the tune of over Rs 100 crore.

As of now, the Mechhua phalpatti operates out of 20 bighas in the city?s central business district. Over the years, major portions of five key roads ? Madan Mohan Burman Street, Ramlochan Mullick Street, Balmukund Makkar Road, Ballavdas Street and Burman Street ? have already been encroached upon by it.

The initiative of relocating the wholesale market is significant as it is entirely independent of the state government and its agencies. Also, the proposed market at Ankurhati will be over seven times the size of the present phalpatti. It will boast of a truck terminal, cold storage, godown, fruit processing centre, banking facilities, a hotel, dormitory, dumping ground with incinerator, a sorting and grading unit and petrol pumps.

Sohrab claimed that Mechhua fruit market is already the largest in Southeast Asia in terms of the volume of domestic sale. Calcutta and its nearby areas alone consume fruits worth around Rs 100 crore a day sourced from the market. The trade hub provides employment to over 2.5 lakh people and does an annual business of Rs 20,000 crore.

?This is a private venture of an agglomeration of eight fruit and vegetable merchants? associations. We are getting immense help from the land and land reforms minister, Abdur Rezzak Mollah, and Howrah MP Swadesh Chakraborty in procurement of the land,? said Sohrab. Four wholesale vegetable markets at Sealdah (Koley Market), New Market, Natunbazar and Howrah have also come under the umbrella of the cooperative.

?Complaints have been pouring in about traffic snarls on Rabindra Sarani and MG Road because of the mounds of garbage and parked trucks at the market. We held meetings with the traders, Citu and other trade unions and convinced them about the shift,? said Umesh Chowdhury, a former councillor of the area.