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Tuesday, Sep 14, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Vellore

Vellore Collector to find solution on proposed bus stand

By Our Staff Reporter

VELLORE, SEPT.13. The delay in acquiring a suitable site for a new bus stand in Vellore came in for discussion at a meeting of the municipal council held under the presidentship of the chairperson, Geetha Ilangovan here on Monday.

Responding to a question from Rajkumar, leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam group in the council as to what was standing in the way of the construction of the bus stand— a project pending for nearly a decade— the Town Planning Officer (TPO), G. Pattabhiraman said the municipality had an open mind over the site selection. One of the sites— a 12.56-acre land in Kagithapattarai— which was inspected by the district and municipal officials bristled with legal problems. While the government had been able to obtain the consent of the landowners in respect of five acres, there was a problem in buying the remaining 7.56 acres of land, since it involved six `pattadhars' (patta holders). They pattadhars said that there was a dispute among them and the original landowners, and that they would come forward to sell the land to the municipality after settling the dispute.

Mr. Pattabhiraman said that as far as the 8-acre site of the erstwhile fruit-processing unit of the erstwhile North Arcot District Cooperative Fruit Processing Society on Old Katpadi Road was concerned, the shareholders in the society demanded payment of Rs.22 crores for parting with the land to the municipality. Since the latter did not have the funds to buy the land, the site could not be purchased. But the proposal had not been dropped, since the municipality felt the land could be purchased if the government came forward to help it in paying the compensation to the shareholders of the society.

The TPO said that the Collector, S. Gopalakrishnan, who had been apprised of the matter promised to inspect both the sites this week and hammer out a solution to the issue before the end of the month. He said the municipality also had a proposal to establish a sewage treatment plant.

Babu, vice-chairman of the municipality wanted the government and the municipal body to examine the feasibility of entrusting the construction and maintenance of the bus stand to a private agency, in tune with the government's policy of privatising the maintenance of the highways and even garbage disposal in some places.

Earlier, Mr. Rajkumar said the construction of a new bus stand was a must in view of the traffic congestion caused by the existing bus stand. The eastern side of the Fort Round Road here had been converted into a temporary bus stand for buses bound for Arni and Tiruvannamalai, while another temporary bus stand existed on Bangalore Road, for buses bound for Chittoor. "Are these temporary bus stands going to become permanent?" he asked.

V.P. Jothi (DMK) said that Vellore was getting water supply only once in 15 days. He wanted to know what steps the municipality was going to take to ease the problem. The chairperson, Ms. Ilangovan said a tender would be floated for purchasing a lorry at a cost of Rs.10 lakhs for supplying water before September 20. The municipal commissioner-in-charge, R. Vasudevan said there was no water in Otteri, while the water from the headworks did not reach the overhead tanks because of the filling of lorries at the headworks. Councillors urged the chairperson to pressurise the district administration to ensure that the National Highways Authority of India expedited the earmarking of the required land for a length of 600 metres on the Chennai-Bangalore Highway to enable the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board to lay the main pipelines to pave the way for the commissioning of the Ponnai drinking water augmentation scheme for Vellore.

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