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Shopping complex planned in park site

BERHAMPUR: For mysterious reasons, the Berhampur municipality is trying hard to transform a half-constructed children’s park into a shopping complex.

It is quite easy for the municipality to take such drastic decisions which would have a long standing impact on the environment of the city as it is not having a master plan since 1969.

A low-lying patch of land near the large Ramlingam Tank, which is called the breathing space of the city, was decided to be transformed into a children’s park around five years ago.

Money could be sanctioned for the park which was utilised to fill up the low-lying area and to build up a boundary around it.

The space was also named ‘Gajapati Sishu Udyan’.

Rather than developing the space into a proper children’s zone as per the proposed plan for green space, the municipality authorities suddenly came up with the idea of building up a shopping complex on the spot in 2006. It was opposed by then district collector.

But suddenly the municipal council, which is at its fag end of the tenure, took up a hasty decision recently to build up shops on the proposed green patch and children’s park as early as possible.

“Municipality never shows such haste to construct drains or roads,” said C.R. Dash, a Congress leader who opposed the move of the municipality and took up the matter with the government and the administration. He urged the urban development ministry and the RDC southern division to intervene.

According to him, as per the Municipality Act of Orissa, the municipality has no power to lease out land for more than six years without the permission of the State government.

But the municipality was leasing out the land of the proposed children’s park at its own whim without getting permission from the State government. Recently the state urban development ministry also cancelled the application of the municipality to give the land of the proposed park on long term lease to build up shopping complex. The greatest irony is that the Berhampur Development Authority (BDA), which is liable for planned growth of the city never objected to this clandestine transformation of a proposed green patch into a shopping complex.

As per Mr. Dash lack of proper master plan is helping land grabbers to end scope of green patches inside the city and the municipality is also helping in it for some mysterious reasons.

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