Udaipur, September 28, 2024 - A few months after clearing up one side of Fatehpura junction in the city to ease traffic bottleneck, the Udaipur Development Authority (UDA) is now preparing to evict 12 shop owners from the other side, too. This step is being taken to further broaden the roundabout to ease up the city's traffic flow around it. However, following the UDA decision and issuance of notice to this effect, the impacted shop owners have come out in protest against this planning.

In a press conference held yesterday, September 27, 2024, shop owners have asked that their property need not be demolished to open up space because there is enough unoccupied area around which could widen the roundabout. They have put pressure on the UDA to utilise the available area so that shop owners will not have to suffer.

Also allegations have been levelled against UDA about the motive behind demolishing the shops. Business owners Kailash Joshi, Mohanlal Kalal and others claim that the real intention is to bring to the front the land behind their shops. They have accused certain UDA officials of being involved in this scheme along with the land owners.

The businessmen claimed that this planning has been going on since the last 70 years. The Urban Development Department had on August 20, 2001, issued a notification under Section 4(2) of land acquisition rules directing procurement of only 2,500 sq ft of land for the expansion of Fatehpura crossroad. At that time, only partial sections of the shops were to be acquired to which the shop owners had agreed.

At that time notices were also given to acquire 8,000 sq ft from Rajendra Dhupia and 4,000 sq ft from Field Club on the opposite side. Now UDA has issued a new notice under Section 9(1) of land acquisition, stating that 5,646 sq ft of land will be taken over instead of the originally mentioned 2,500 sq ft.

The shop owners claim that this would mean that their entire shop would now be acquired. They demanded that in such a case all impacted owners should be provided with alternate shops so that their livelihood does not suffer.

Also present at the press conference were Ashok Kumar Sen, Shambhu Kumar Sen, Ramesh Joshi, Parvat Singh, Dheeraj Salvi, Nathulal Salvi, Prabhu Lal Chittora, Vishal Vasita, Jai Singh, Surjit Singh, Chunnilal Sharma, Sanjay Sharma, Mohan Poorbia and Rohit Sen.

Readers may recall that some months ago, the UIT had demolished buildings on one side of Fatehpura roundabout to open up the bottleneck and had arranged land-for-land compensation for the affected property owners.

Source: Media Reports