GMDA likely to get land to shift toll plaza this week
Days after the Punjab and Haryana High Court vacated the stay on 50 acres of land in Pachgaon for moving the Kherki Dhaula toll plaza, Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) and Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HSIIDC) has begun the process of moving the toll plaza. GMDA has already written to the industrial corporation to handover the land for the toll plaza last week.
A senior official at GMDA confirmed and said, “We had written to HSIIDC to hand over the land and have also asked NHAI to start working on the design for the new toll plaza.” HSIIDC officials shared that they have received the letter from GMDA and are hopeful of concluding the handover this week.
However, the remaining 1,128 acres of the land is still in litigation.
“We will hand over the land to GMDA and they can then allot it to NHAI. We are in the process of issuing the order for the handover, and it should be done in the next couple of days,” said Narhari Banger, Managing Director, HSIIDC.
Sources within NHAI also concurred that they have received intimation from the GMDA. “Once the land has been handed over, it will take us around three months to complete the work before we can shift the toll plaza,” the source added.
The high court had vacated the stay on the 50 acres of land last Thursday allowing the state government to take over the land in Pachgaon for moving the toll plaza. The order passed by a two-judge bench of justices Manjuri Nehru and Rajan Gupta put an end to a dispute between HSIIDC and the land owners.
Initially, HSIIDC had earmarked around 38 acres of land for shifting the toll plaza in Sehrawan but the plan was changed after the environmentalists protested saying that the area was a wildlife corridor. Later, Pachgaon was identified for this purpose and a 36-lane toll plaza was planned there.
Meanwhile, a group of new sector residents also met the GMDA officials and requested that the handover of the land be expedited so that the movement of the toll plaza can happen at the earliest.