BAFFLED BY the Army’s move of putting up freshly painted notice boards staking its claim to the Nehru Enclave land, the LDA has decided to take the issue to the court.
To make matters worse, the Army authorities are now reportedly exerting pressure on the civic authorities (read LDA) to get the Juggauli village, which they claim is defense property, in the Enclave’s vicinity vacated.
“We already have enough problems on our hands in the form of getting our flats in the colony vacated from illegal occupants,” said an LDA officer. Having got them vacated, we intended to auction these flats but by putting up these notice boards at this juncture, the Army seems to have thrown a spanner in our plan, he said.
Attempts by HT Lucknow Live to obtain army authorities version on the issue drew a blank. The LDA’s property tussle with the Army is more than a decade old. The dispute centres round an old firing range, which the Army claimed existed at the site measuring a whopping 193 acres then. “And the only proof they have to back their claim is a government notification in this regard,” said an LDA officer. Our land/revenue records, however, show that only 25-acres was earmarked for the firing range, he added.
Had it not been for the High Court order in 1999 asking the army to vacate the Nehru Enclave flats, that its personnel had forcibly occupied, hundreds of allottees of this housing scheme would never have got possession of their property. “In the past six years, we have conducted joint survey of the site, held several rounds of talks and offered alternative land to them but things have never got past the discussion stage,” said another LDA official.
{{/usCountry}}Had it not been for the High Court order in 1999 asking the army to vacate the Nehru Enclave flats, that its personnel had forcibly occupied, hundreds of allottees of this housing scheme would never have got possession of their property. “In the past six years, we have conducted joint survey of the site, held several rounds of talks and offered alternative land to them but things have never got past the discussion stage,” said another LDA official.
{{/usCountry}}A ray of hope for a possible solution to the vexed property dispute emerged in March 2005, when the defense authorities wrote a letter to the Chief Town and Country Planning department. The issue was a proposed housing project by a private developer on Sultanpur Road near its (army’s) Arjunganj firing range.
In his missive one Colonel Manjeet Singh had then drew the planners’ attention towards the possible hazards of developing a residential colony in what active firing range. He had then went on to point out that a case had been projected to the LDA for giving some civil land in exchange for the Trans Gomti encroachment (read Nehru Enclave Scheme of LDA) on defence land by the LDA.
The only area available adjacent and contiguous to Cantonment boundary is in the region close to Arjunganj. It is quite possible that the civil authorities may offer the same land to Army and the offer may be accepted in the near future. Nothing has been heard about the offer ever since.