So it has been decided that after the fall of the towers, a park will come up again. The Twin Towers, which will be demolished on Sunday afternoon, are the tallest towers to be demolished in the country.
Mayur Mehta, Project Manager at Edifice Engineering, which is responsible for the demolition, told IANS that instead of Joseph Brixman, Chetan Dutta, who is an Indian blaster, will press the final button for the blast.
Mayur Mehta said that the preparations have been completed and the work of demolition of the Twin Towers will start at 2.30 p.m. on August 28. He stated that all the no-objection certificates have been obtained. The final meeting has been held and now the wiring work is going on. He added that the people of the surrounding societies are giving full cooperation and the societies will be completely evacuated by 7 a.m. on the said day.
The windows, doors and all the open spaces in the neighbouring flats in Emerald Court are being closed. A form has also been given by the society to the residents of Emerald Court with regard to rules, whereby the residents must give the details of their flat before vacating it.
According to the rules, residents will have to close their windows and doors completely and the chimney block must be sealed. The gas connection will have to be turned off and electricity will be disconnected.
Besides, the traffic department has made arrangements for parking the vehicles of the residents.
The debris of the Twin Towers will be cleaned after the blast. The demolition will produce about 60,000 tonnes of debris, in addition to 4,000 tonnes of rebar and steel which will be separated. About 30,000 tonnes will be used to fill the basement and around 30,000 tonnes of debris will be disposed off.
The Noida Authority has a C&D Waste Management Plant in Sector 80 with a capacity of 300 metric tons per day. It has been decided by the administration that the debris will be brought here and disposed off. From this debris, cement and tiles will be made here by recycling. About 20 dumpers will carry the debris daily.
It has been informed that the Authority has given the green signal regarding the C&D waste plant.
Locals have said that the house should be demolished as it will lead to accidents in the area and act as an obstacle in construction of second bridge over Mahanadi River which is vital for Sambalpur's development.
The locals have asked the administration to build a memorial of the Assamese litterateur, informed sources.
According to sources, the locals also presented a memorandum to the Additional collector.
"After receiving a memorandum from locals, I have forwarded it to the collector," Additional Collector, Ajay Kumar Jena said.
"Presence of this house enhances the possibility of accidents in the area, so we have urged the district collector to demolish it and build a memorial in another location," Sambalpur resident, Manas Ranjan Bakshi said.
Meanwhile, police personnel have been deployed near the residence to check any kind of untoward incident.
Last year, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had assured the Assam government to preserve the century-old house of the renowned litterateur.
The announcement had come after Assam Cultural Affairs Minister Naba Kumar Doley and Assam CM’s press advisor Hrishikesh Goswami discussed the matter with Patnaik at the Secretariat in Bhubaneswar.
Berhampur: At least 20 persons were detained by the Berhampur police following agitations over the demolition of a Hanuman temple near Gautam Cinema Hall of the city.
The demolition was carried out by the district administration as part of the eviction drive around 4.30 am this morning. Government officials present during the drive alleged that the temple was illegally built on government's land.
Protesting the move, BJP and Bajrang Dal activists sat on dharna and held demonstrations in front of the temple.
As the drive progressed, protesters raised slogans and engaged in a scuffle with the officials in an attempt to thwart the demolition. “As many as 20 Bajrang Dal activists had to be taken under preventive detention to ensure law and order,” a senior official informed.
The activists under the banner of the Ashoka Market Traders’ Association blocked the road at the market by burning tyres.
A decision was taken recently by the state government to demolish the Ashoka Market complex and develop a multiplex in its place. As a part of the programme, the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) has started the eviction drive at Ashoka Market here for which it has reportedly snapped power and water supply in the area.
The activists alleged that the BDA cut off electricity and water supply without any prior information.
“We were unaware about it. After reaching here in the morning to open our shops, we found that water and electricity lines have been cut off. The BDA did it without serving any notice. Around 70-80 medicine shops are there in the market. They refrigerate costly vaccines and injections. We are not able to open our shops,” said a shop owner.
“The BDA carried out the eviction drive at around 4am without informing us. I have a shop of food items, many of which are kept frozen. The authorities should have informed us before carrying out the drive,” said Sipra Sagarika, another vendor.
The opposing groups said instead of taking steps to renovate historical buildings such as Manguli Matha and Annapurna Rangamancha near the Deba Snana Mandap, the district administration’s decision to bulldoze the buildings is not a right step. They also threatened to take legal recourse opposing the decision.
Annapurna Rangamancha joint secretary Ramakrushna Mohapatra stated, “Efforts will be made to pressurise the government in transforming the historical building into a museum after renovation.”
Meanwhile, Puri Sub collector Madhusudan Mishra said as cases in connection with some of the buildings are pending in courts, the administration is working on resolving the matter out of court.
The district administration on Wednesday issued demolition notice to 33 unsafe buildings on basis of joint inspection report submitted by the Works department engineers.
The state government has declared a total of 583 apartments in Bhubaneswar as illegal of which it has decided to demolish 195 apartments. The issue has been raised in the State Assembly 10 times in the last 16 years.
The issue was first raised by Dushmant Nayak in the State Assembly during monsoon session in August 2010 to which the then minister in his reply had said 425 apartments have been illegally constructed of which 148 apartments would be demolished. The minister had also the same reply in the winter session of the State Assembly in November in the same year. He had also given the same reply in the House in 2011, 2013 and 2014.
Criticising the dilly-dallying attitude of the state government, senior BJP leader and former minister Biswabhusan Harichandan said “What the state government was doing when these apartments were being constructed illegally? Now that the Housing and Urban Development minister has announced in the State Assembly that the government will take steps to demolish 195 apartments. I am sure that the owners of these apartments will move the court against the order of the state government. Moreover, if there is any such case pending in the court and the court has ordered a stay, the state government cannot do anything, leave alone demolishing these apartments”.
Talking to OTV, Tapan Mohanty, MD, Z Estate, said the apartments having no deviation are included in the list of apartments which will be demolished. The reason is that the occupancy certificate has not been issued. If investigations are made in this regard, several apartments will be eliminated from this list. “But if some apartments have deviated from the existing norms, Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) should take action against them,” he pointed out.
Senior BJD leader and former minister Surya Narayan Patro said the executing agency BDA has the right to demolish apartments which have been built illegally. But the BDA is not discharging its duty properly. “Hundreds of people are living in the apartments which have no proper planning, no approval and no fire safety measures. Taking these into consideration, these apartments should be demolished,” he maintained.
Twenty five platoons of forces were deployed at the spot in apprehension of a possible law and order situation. Prohibitory orders under section 144 of CrPC were also clamped within a 500-metre radius of the place.
However, Sanatan’s house and office, which is spread over 1 acre and 20 decimals of land spread over multiple plots, will not be evicted on account of a stay order issued by the High Court, official sources said.
The independent legislator refused to make any comment on the demolition. “I have nothing to say. People of Keonjhar are with me. They will give reply in the coming days”, Mahakud said.
“There are two plots – one 5 acre and the other 1 acre 20 decimals. There is a High Court stay on the 1-acre 2 decimal patch of land. In the 5 acre land, there are some temporary sheds built for cattle and livestock. Moreover, there are some construction workers who are staying in that patch of land. These constructions will be evicted,” ADM Sangram Keshari Swain had clarified earlier.
Moreover, court had also allowed the temple built on a portion of encroached land to be retained.
As per the facts mentioned in the order of the Champua Civil Judge Court and the Odisha High Court, Mahakud has encroached a vast stretch of government land at Uchabali Mouza under Badbil tehsil since 1980. He has built a mansion on the encroached land, which comes under Essel mining lease area.
As the illegal possession of the government land came to the fore and the Revenue department began investigation into the matter, the Champua MLA formed Maa Jagat Janani Trust in 2011 and built a temple of Goddess Jagat Janani in a bid to take legal possession of the land.
Badbil tehsildar then initiated a move to evict the encroached land. After being served with a notice by the Badbil tehsildar, Mahakud had filed a petition in the Civil Judge(Senior Division) Court, Champua which rejected his petition. Later, he had filed a writ petition in the Odisha High Court. While upholding the order of the lower court, the High Court had made it clear that under no circumstances would the valuable government land be transferred in the name of a person.
As a last resort, Mahakud had later moved the Supreme Court. The apex court, in its order, allowed Mahakud to retain a portion of the land where he had built the temple, but asked him to vacate the remaining encroached area while upholding the order of the lower court.
The demolition happened today at the site deep in the mountains of the North's sparsely populated northeast.
The planned closing was previously announced by leader Kim Jong Un ahead of his planned summit with US President Donald Trump next month.
The North's decision to close the site has generally been seen as a welcome gesture by Kim to set a positive tone ahead of the summit. Even so, it is not an irreversible move and would need to be followed by many more significant measures to meet Trump's demands for denuclearization.
The North did not invite international inspectors to the ceremony, which limits its value as a concession.
By Sandeep Sahu
In the normal course, the announcement by the Housing and Urban Development (H & UD) minister Pushpendra Singhdeo in the Odisha Assembly on Friday that ‘directions have been issued’ for demolition of no less than 195 ‘illegally constructed’ apartment blocks in Bhubaneswar should have sent the occupants – and builders, if they are still unoccupied - of these apartments into a tizzy, perspiring profusely about the dreadful possibility. But in reality, no one, simply no one appears to be losing any sleep over the prospect of these being razed to the ground, secure in the knowledge that the threat is never going to be carried out.
There are two basic reasons for this nonchalance. The first of these is that those in the H & UD department , including officials of the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA), responsible for giving approval to these apartments or closing their eyes while they were being ‘illegally constructed,’ will make sure the threat remains just that to save their own skin. Illegal construction on this scale is simply not possible without the backing of powerful people in the government. It is unrealistic in the extreme to expect those who facilitated this illegality in the first place to act against those who were at the receiving end of their favours.
The second reason for the complacency is the court. Given how generous courts are in giving stay orders on matters involving property, it is extremely difficult to get the demolition order, which is certain to be challenged (if it hasn’t already been challenged, that is), ratified by a court. Even if such an order is actually secured, it can always be challenged in a higher court. After all, those who have invested crores on these projects can hardly be expected to watch their painstakingly built high rises turned into rubble in a matter of hours. They would obviously pull out all stops and pull in all their resources to drag the case as far and as long as they can. [And we all know how damn easy it is to get an adjournment in a case, don’t we?] Thus, the final order could take several years coming by which time the claims of the ‘illegal’ occupants would have been further strengthened. It goes without saying that the order cannot be implemented while the case is ‘sub judice’.
In charting the possible course of the case through the various layers of the judiciary above, we have taken one thing for granted: that the government would fight the case in all sincerity with an objective to secure a demolition order from the court. But the experience of the past suggests that the government is often less than keen to pursue such cases to their logical conclusion. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that there are many cases that the government fights in the court to lose rather than win (and no prizes for guessing why it does so). This is certainly one such case because an order of the court sanctioning the demolition cannot possibly come without the concerned officials being prosecuted for their acts of omission and commission. So the builders/occupants of the illegal apartments don’t have to fret over the threat issued by the minister today. They know the government, which issued the demolition order, would do everything possible to ensure that the order is never carried out!
Even assuming that the highest court in the country does ratify the government order, the actual demolition would hardly be a cakewalk. We have all seen how difficult it is for the authorities, armed with court orders, sufficient police force and all bulldozing equipment, to carry out eviction/demolition of even a slum in the face of people’s protest. And these are big apartment buildings, which make things even more difficult for the authorities – again assuming that they are keen to demolish the structures in the first place.
We have all seen what happened to the case of massive and long running scandal of dubious allotments of plots, houses and flats in the Twin City under the ‘discretionary quota’ (DQ), which dominated the headlines for weeks together last year. More than a year down the line, no one really knows what happened to the much discussed report of the Task Force headed by retired bureaucrat Tara Dutt and its unambiguous recommendation for cancellation of all such allotments since 1995 –save a few notices issued by the BDA and CDA.
Make no mistake. The case of the 195 illegal apartments is set to go the way of the DQ case.
The discovery of the secret underground chambers sparked curiosity among the local residents as hundreds of people gathered near the spot to witness the spectacle.
While it is stated that the chambers might have been used for storing purposes of the mutt, many onlookers believed that it could be holding hidden treasures. It may be noted that around 522 British-era silver bricks weighing over 18 tonnes were discovered from the Emar Mutt in 2011.
“There must be hidden treasure along with large quantities of valuables in these secret chambers,” said a local.
Asked about the chambers, the Mahanta Maharaj of the mutt however said that they used to serve as the ‘kothi ghara’ (store room) of the monastery and had helped people meet food grain demands during precarious times in the past like the Orissa Famine of 1866.
Puri additional collector Binaya Kumar Dash said, “The Emar Mutt building was unsafe and that’s why we demolished it. There is a basement structure in the mutt and we are looking into it. Elaborate arrangement has been made with police deployment and Magistrate and all precautionary steps have been taken. After the Raghunadan library was demolished, books and documents have been kept in safer places.”
A member of Snake Helpline said the kothi was 50 ft long and 12 ft dip. “The kothi ghara might be used to store food grains,” he said.
“The eviction drive is going on properly and the district administration is taking steps properly,” said Anil Samal, RDC central division.
It is believed that since the mutt is quite old, the underground chambers also must have been hundreds of years old as large number of reptiles and bats were also spotted by members of snake helpline who first took stock of the hidden rooms after their discovery today.
Yesterday, the administrative officials had discovered various rare and old books and manuscripts during the eviction from British-era Raghunadan library.
After evacuation of Emar Mutt, the administration will also demolish seven other old mutts as part of its eviction drive from 75 metres of the shrine wall of the Puri Srimandir.
After the announcement of additional 10% incentive for voluntarily vacating property within one month of the government notification, more and more people are opting for the offer.
However, several Mutt chiefs and affected local residents have said that the sanctioned amount is not enough for the rehabilitation work and compensation for land.
Mahant (Chief) of Radhaballav Mutt, Ramkrushna Das Mahapatra said, "The amount sanctioned by the government is not enough as the valuation of Mutts will exceed the total amount."
"The State government should take adequate steps to ensure that nobody is affected financially," said a Puri resident, Madan Mohan Hota.
Speaking on the issue, district collector Balwant Singh said that as soon as land handover process is completed, cash will be deposited into the accounts of the owners.
"The funds will be released after proper assessment of buildings and completion of land acquisition," said Singh.
A social impact assessment survey following the decision to clear structures within 75 metres of the Jagannath temple in Puri is underway.
The survey was launched by the State Revenue and Disaster Management department on Monday.
The structures will be demolished to pave way for construction of a 10-storey apartment with garden, gym, rest house, parking lot and other modern-day amenities.
Reprimanding some former MLAs for not surrendering their government quarters, Odisha Assembly Speaker Surya Narayan Patro had directed them to vacate quarters in October. While so far 24 MLAs have vacated their quarters, others have been served notices to vacate the quarters as soon as possible.
"The multi storey building will be built for 150 MLAs with underground parking facility. The MLAs who are yet to vacate the quarters have been served notice," said Patro.
Patro had earlier informed that the lobby of the Odisha Assembly will also get a complete makeover. The entire State Assembly will be WiFi-enabled with modern-day lighting facilities. Tenders have already been invited for the project, he had said.