In view of the expansion and development of Bokaro Airport, the district administration will launch a special anti-encroachment drive from 3 December. Earlier the drive was scheduled to begin on 30 November but after the request of the encroachers, who are still residing there, the administration has given them two more days to make alternate arrangements.
Over 400 houses (huts) at an unauthorised slum adjacent to the airport boundary wall in Sector XII of the Bokaro Steel City’s township would be razed.
Bokaro Deputy Commissioner MK Barnawal held a meeting with Bokaro Steel Plant (BSL) and district administration officials and discussed several issues. He asked them to clear encroachment within the next two days, informed PR official.
“The illegal houses that came up in the area were creating problems for expansion of the airport. All-out efforts would be made to make the areas encroachments free,” he added. Notably, earlier in June 2011 more than 200 houses of the slum were demolished by a joint team of BSL and the district administration but again the slum flourished and now its number grows to double.
At that time, on the directive of the high court, BSL had passed an eviction order against those houses that had come up illegally in the locality and demolition drive was conducted in the presence of a large number of police personnel and magistrate.
The people who had been living at the slum vacated the premises without protest.
Bokaro is to be connected RCS (Regional Connectivity Scheme) under the Government of India’s flagship scheme UDAN. Chief Minister Raghubar Das recently laid the foundation stone for the development of Bokaro airport at Bokaro Steel City.
The other major issue in expansion and infrastructure development work is about 6,000 trees that have to be axed for the expansion and forest department including others are in fray ‘where to keep the felled trees’.
Barnawal asked the BSL officials to provided space in City Park to keep those felled trees. The DC also made it clear that cutting of the trees has been done in two-phase by AAI and not by the forest department.
In the first phase, 4000 trees would be axed, informed an official. But the district administration and Bokaro Steel Plant (BSL) authority other related departments will have to plant five trees for every tree would be felled, an official said.
