Investors lament delays in acquiring Faridabad land (Hindustan Times Report)

[webmaster]

In our continuous effort to highlight the cause for Greater Faridabad development, Hindustan Times has published an article again on our concerns. Thanks to Dheeraj for continuously following up with the editor for media coverage.

Investors lament delays in acquiring faridabad land

Prabhu Razdan
FARIDABAD

Inordinate delays in land acquisition for infrastructure development has investors in Greater Faridabad a worried lot. A large number of such investors have now formed a body -Greater Faridabad Welfare Association -to take up the issue.
After having raised the matter with local authorities, the investors have decided to aggressively take up the matter with state authorities, including Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
“We met officers of Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) in Faridabad, enquiring about reasons for the inordinate delay in infrastructure development but the response was not satisfactory,“ said Jayanta, who heads the association. “There are no roads, no electricity and no sewage lines,“ said Dheeraj Jain, another member of the association.
HUDA had created new sectors and issued licenses to private developers in the area a few years ago. But non-acquisition of land had hampered development in the area.
While people from 19 villages were initially against the government's decision to acquire their land, the issue had been resolved with farmers claiming compensation.
“We have disbursed about R300 crore among 50% of the villagers,“ said Arvind Malhan, estate officer, HUDA, Faridabad.
“The rest will be disbursed within a fortnight. Once that is done, developmental activity in Greater Faridabad will follow.“

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Investors ... 53929.aspx

[dheerajjain]

Good thing about this is that media is finally exerting pressure on HUDA. When we first visted top officers of HUDA, they told us that development of Greater Faridabad is of low priority to them. Now, group of newspapers like Navbharat Times (Hindi), Dainik Bhaskar (Hindi) and Hindustan Times (English) have come forward and made "low priority" a "high priority".