Garia-Airport Metro set to clear shanty hurdle

KOLKATA: The process of removing encroachment to make way for 11 piers of the New Garia-Airport Metro at the gateway of New Town has finally started.
Two years ago, six buildings, including high-rises, were razed to free the land to bridge the 400m gap along the elevated Metro viaduct at the foot of the flyover near Mahishbathan. But Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL), the agency tasked to build the city’s longest Metro corridor, covering 32km between New Garia and Airport, couldn’t make any headway because most of the land was encroached upon by these shanties.In 2018, when Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation had demolished the high-rises, the shanty count was 40. Now it has gone up to 74.

A high-level e-meeting was held on Friday between North 24-Parganas DM Chaitali Chakraborti, Hidco chairman Debashis Sen, municipal commissioner Debashis Ghosh, mayor Krishna Chakraborty and senior police officers and it was decided that a committee will be formed to resettle the shanty-dwellers. The committee will comprise representatives from various stakeholders like Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, urban development department and police. An RVNL official said, “The committee will facilitate temporarily settling these 74 shanty-dwellers to a empty government plot. Once, the viaduct construction is over, the families will be brought back to the present location.”
“Much as we want to remove the hurdle for the Metro project, we also need to rehabilitate the shanty-dwellers,” fire services minister and Bidhannagar MLA Sujit Bose said. Bidhannagar mayor, who has been included in the committee, said: “The committee will relocate the dwellers to a temporary spot belonging to the urban development department to make way for the Metro construction.” On Thursday, the mayor and the Hidco chairman visited the spot.