Metro project: MEGA offers relocation option to residents

The Metro-Link Express for Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad (MEGA) Company Limited, in a submission made before the Gujarat High Court today, offered relocation option to residents facing displacement due to the proposed metro rail project.
MEGA Company Ltd, which has maintained that the metro project route could not be altered, offered to relocate 22 petitioners residing in the city's Jivraj Park Society to Vejalpur area.
Respondent Anil Gupta, General Manager (Planning) of MEGA, submitted before the division bench of judges A J Uraizee and Z K Saiyed that the company would go ahead to acquire the land if petitioners agreed to be relocated at the given address.

The petitioners will respond to the offer in the next hearing scheduled on March 29.
The petitioners, including residents and shop-owners of Mangal Deep and Vishwakarma residential societies of Jivraj Park area, from where the north-south elevated corridor of the proposed metro rail starts, had moved the high court, alleging that acquisition of their properties by MEGA was not in accordance with the provisions of Land Acquisition Act of 2013.
They had claimed that they would lose their houses and shops due to the project and the state-owned MEGA, which is undertaking the project of Metro Rail, is not ready to provide anything beyond cash compensation against the acquisition of their properties, which is a violation of the Act.