CR Park residents announce ₹10k reward for ‘missing’ road
PROTEST Resident oppose mall in area, say road supposed to ease traffic jams doesn’t exist
More than 10 resident welfare associations (RWAs) from Chittaranjan Park and Alaknanda in south Delhi gathered at the Rajesh Pilot Park on Sunday to hunt for a ‘missing road’ in their locality.
Residents said the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) is set to build a mall in the neighbourhood (at a plot between Kalka Public School and a petrol pump in Alaknanda) next to the road, which only appears in zonal maps.
For more than three years, residents have been protesting the project that they said would lead to traffic jams in the area as the road, which the authorities believe would bear the extra traffic burden, didn’t exist in reality.
The residents contend that the project will lead to traffic problems .
Residents claim that the DDA has shown the road in the ‘transport circulation report’, submitted to Delhi Urban Art commission in 2007, while getting a plan approved for construction of Delhi second biggest mall.
“For getting the land use changed, the DDA had submitted the report with DUAC. The authority claimed that there would be no chaos in the area as a road will allow the free movement of traffic from Alaknanda to Ring Road. But at the place earmarked as road, there is a park, a government building as well as a municipal school today,” said Vivek Sharma, general secretary of NRI Complex RWA.
The discontented RWAs organised a ‘mock drill’ on Sunday to hunt for the missing road and issued a dummy cheque of ₹10,000 for the winner.
“So many people participated in the drill, but nobody could find the road. Finally, we issued a cheque of ₹10,000 in the name of the DDA chairman who probably knows where the road is actually located, ” said Sharma, who has also registered a complaint with the Kalkaji police station on April 10 about the missing road.
In 2007, DDA had sold 3.6 acres of land to a private developer for Rs 304 crore on a freehold basis. A plot measuring 15,000 square metre (approx) was allocated for the construction of the mall. But residents opposed the move saying that the land was originally earmarked to set up community facilities. They approached DDA officials, but to no avail.
Finally, the Citizen Alliance, an organisation from the area, took the matter to court. In 2013, the organisation filed a petition in Delhi High Court against the DDA’s sanctioning of the plan. On July 13, 2016, the court directed DDA to form a two-member panel and address the pleas of the petitioner within eight weeks.
On the other hand according to Uday Pratap Singh, vice chairman, DDA, they had already submitted a report in the Delhi High Court last year. “As far as the allegation os residents about the missing road is concerned, I need to verify the facts,” he said.