DDA inspection to find road that went ‘missing’

Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has proposed a joint inspection to find a “missing” road located near 3.6 acres land allotted for the construction of a mall in south Delhi’s Alaknanda locality.

The residents of CR Park and Alaknanda have been protesting against the DDA’s plan to construct the mall in the neighbourhood (at a plot between Kalka Public School and a petrol pump in Alaknanda) and next to the road, which only appears in zonal maps. Residents say the project would lead to massive jams in the area.

A group of residents had moved court and some of them wrote to the PM office against the project.

On July 31, in the view of the grievances of residents, DDA’s planning department had asked the land disposal department to hold an inspection along with the senior official of Public Works Department and South Delhi Municipal Corporation to verify the residents claim about the “non-existent 24-metre-road”, which as per authorities’ claim, connects Shaheed Suryasen Marg and Sudarshan Munjal Marg.

“Though the road is shown in the Master Plan of Delhi 2001 but as per the Slum and JJ Department (now, Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board) layout plan-1983, a portion of road is under use by a government girls school and the rest encroached for unauthorised construction,” a senior DDA official said.

“We have already written to the DUSIB on this issue,” he said.

Last week, PWD had said that “Shaheed Suryasen Marg connects DDA market at one end and Alaknanada Road at another end”, but it doesn’t connect to Sudarshan Munjal Marg. The information was shared in reply to an RTI filed by Vivek Sharma, an advocate and a resident of NRI Complex in Alaknanda, who had also written to Prime Minister’s Office regarding the issue.

“DDA is adamant on building a mall in the neighbourhood next to the road, which only appears in zonal maps,” said Sharma.

For more than three years, residents have been protesting the project that they said would lead to traffic jams in the area as the road, which the authorities believe would bear the extra traffic

IN APRIL 10 RWAS HAD ANNOUNCED A REWARD OF ₹10,000 FOR ANYBODY WHO WOULD LOCATE THE ROAD

burden, didn’t exist in reality.

In April, More than 10 resident welfare associations (RWAs) from Chittaranjan Park and Alaknanda announced a reward of ₹10,000 for finding the road

In 2007, DDA had sold 3.6 acres of land to a private developer for Rs 304 crore on a freehold basis.

A plot measuring 15,000 square metre (approx) was allocated for the construction of the mall.

But residents opposed the move, saying that the land was originally earmarked to set up community facilities.

The Citizen Alliance, an organisation from the area, took the matter to court. In 2013, the organisation filed a petition in Delhi High Court against the DDA’s sanctioning of the plan. On July 13, 2016, the court directed DDA to form a two-member panel and address the pleas of the petitioner within eight weeks.

The DDA had said that it submitted a report in the court last year.