Ghaziabad development body to develop mini-township on 12 acres

GHAZIABAD: The Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA) is planning to revive the Indirapuram extension scheme, which was put on the back burner due to farmers’ protests over enhanced land compensation.

The GDA conceived the scheme in 2004 but could not lay its hands on the land due to protests from the farmers over extra compensation. In 2020, the authority even urged the state government to denotify the 240 acres of land it had earmarked for the scheme.

TOI has learnt that the GDA has now requested the state government not to consider its denotification plea. If revived, the housing scheme is expected to help the GDA tide over the financial crunch it’s facing.

“The farmers from whom the land was to be acquired were not on the same page over the rates and the matter even lingered in court for some years, forcing us to initially bring down the land size from 240 acres to 80 acres. We had to again scale it down to 60 acres but even that didn’t work out,” an official from the Development Authority said.

The principal region behind the farmers not agreeing to part away with the land was the rate. “The circle rate of the area is Rs 72,000 per sqm but the farmers were demanding Rs 1.40 lakh per sqm. It was financially not feasible for the GDA to agree to the same,” he said.

To lure the farmers into selling the land, the GDA had also proposed land pooling policy but that too failed to cut ice with them.

“With all options exhausted, GDA may now develop a mini-township with group housing societies on just 12 acres of land which it managed to acquire,” the official added.

“The land rates in Indirapuram are quite high and in terms of property this is what farmers have got. So, they would obviously want higher land rates,” said Sikdar Tyagi, a local resident.