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Officials of the Chandigarh administration, along with those from Haryana, on Monday completed the demarcation of 12 acres of land in Saketri village that will be handed over to Chandigarh. The land is being allocated to Chandigarh in exchange for 10 acres of ‘prime’ land, which the UT in turn will be handing over to Haryana for the purpose of construction of its separate Assembly premises.
As per details, the piece of land that will be handed over to Chandigarh is in Saketri village is just adjacent to Rajiv Gandhi Technology Park, commonly known as IT Park Chandigarh.
Chandigarh Deputy Commissioner, Vinay Pratap Singh, while speaking to The Indian Express on Monday, confirmed the development and said that demarcation had been carried out and they are at present “waiting for the demarcation report of the land” from the Haryana government.
A visit to the spot on Monday where land revealed that the officials had installed small pillars on the piece of land — numbered 1 to 18 — to indicate that the piece of land had been demarcated. A meeting with Haryana government officials is scheduled to be held by the end of this month once the demarcation report and non-encumbrance certificate has been submitted.
Sources said that the demarcation was done in the presence of officers of the Haryana government, the Chandigarh administration and one officer from the Chandigarh Housing Board. The detailed report would be submitted to the Chandigarh administration this week, an official said.
Haryana Vidhan Sabha Speaker, Gian Chand Gupta, while speaking to The Indian Express on Monday said, “We are in regular communication with the Chandigarh administration on the allotment of land for our Assembly. Hopefully, it will be allotted soon now that things have started moving.”
Gupta stated that once they receive the possession of the land, they will begin the work soon. The UT administration had recently taken a decision wherein they had decided to allot 10 acres of land in Chandigarh on IT Park road going towards Chandigarh railway station to the Haryana government. The land, many officials in the administration believe, is considered prime with high commercial value.
In return, the murmurs in Chandigarh administration circles are that the piece of land that the UT will be getting from Haryana might end up being contentious owing to its proximity to the Sukhna catchment area/wildlife sanctuary.
In order to support their point, some officials pointed out that an infrastructure development project conceived by the Chandigarh administration on 110 acres of land at IT Park, right adjacent to where the 12 acres at Saketri village have been allotted to them, had already landed in trouble with the Union Forest Ministry refusing to give its nod for carrying out construction in the area.
As per details, Chandigarh Housing Board’s general housing scheme that was coming up at IT Park — which is adjacent to Saketri — was rejected by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change which had said that “development of high-rise buildings near the [Sukhna] sanctuary would lead to disturbance in the migratory paths of the birds.”
Some officials privy to the development also asked why Haryana had to enter into a land swap deal with Chandigarh in the first place when it already had vacant land in Saketri that could have been used for
construction of its new Assembly.
Prodded about how the UT administration decided to use the 12-acre site at Saketri, Chandigarh Deputy Commissioner Vinay Pratap Singh said that the Department of urban planning has been given the responsibility of coming up with a development plan for the area
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