E-Paper
PMC to develop equal value infrastructure to get defence land for Chandani chowk flyover project
PMC has decided to depute project consultants to complete equal value infrastructure work which National Defence Academy (NDA) wants the corporation to complete
To complete the Chandani chowk flyover project, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has got land from the Defence Ministry. Now, PMC has decided to depute project consultants to complete equal value infrastructure work which National Defence Academy (NDA) wants the corporation to complete.
As per the agreement in 2015, the PMC would provide land to the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) for the project. NHAI has divided the project into two phases so that PMC gets time to acquire the 11.4 hectares of land to start work out of the total 13 hectares of land needed for the project. The cost of the project is around ₹400 crore and it has been spent by NHAI.
PMC needs defence land of 0.48 hectares for Chandani chowk flyover. It is under the control of the NDA. It is almost 1.5 kilometres from the academy’s main entrance, on the Mumbai-Bangalore national highway.
Indrabhan Randive, executive engineer, project department of PMC, said, “ The cost of land is around ₹16.88 crore. The defence has given working permission to start work on a flyover on their land. The Defence Ministry is ready to hand over land to PMC on the equal value land. The Defence Ministry has given a proposal to the PMC to develop infrastructure. Instead of money, they want the civic body to develop infrastructure.”
He further said, “We have decided to depute consultants who will develop infrastructure as per defence requirement.”
Earlier, NHAI was ready to pay the land cost to the Defence Ministry to speed up the work and the corporation will give the same amount of land cost to NHAI. The PMC general body meeting also passed a proposal according to the same. Later, it was changed. The Defence Ministry proposed to develop an equal value infrastructure. After that, NHAI requested the corporation to develop infrastructure as they are expertise in road construction.
Finally, the corporation showed a positive response and agreed to develop infrastructure as per the requirement of the Defence Ministry.
On August 27, 2017, Union minister for road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari laid the foundation stone of the project. It is one of the ambitious projects of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the city. The project is implemented by the NHAI. To build the flyover at Chandni Chowk — which is a connecting point for the Hinjewadi IT Park and also includes stretches of the Mumbai-Bangalore bypass, Mulshi road, Paud road and Pashan road.
