Unfinished road-widening works put AT Agraharam residents to trouble in Guntur city
The Hindu
The residents of AT Agraharam in Guntur city are suffering due to the delay in completion of the road-widening works undertaken by the municipal corporation.
The residents of AT Agraharam in Guntur city are suffering due to the delay in completion of the road-widening works undertaken by the municipal corporation. The existing road is being widened to 80 feet to facilitate free movement of traffic.
Though the works began about a year back, they are going on at a snail’s pace, and legal disputes are being cited as a major reason for the delay.
Meanwhile, sewage and stormwater are overflowing on the road causing inconvenience to the residents and the other road users.
Mayor Kavati Manohar Naidu said the road-widening works were taken up from Chuttugunta Centre to Zero Line of AT Agraharam as per the Master Plan. Thirty-one private property owners on the road approached the High Court, disputing the widening works. The GMC officials are negotiating with them, as per the interim orders of the court, Mr. Naidu said, and hoped that the works would be completed as soon as possible.
The GMC officials identified 210 properties for removal for the road works, out of which 153 are private properties, 23 B-Form properties, 19 Urban Land Ceiling (ULC) properties, 12 encroachments, one temple and two other properties.
So far, the GMC paid ₹4.38 crore as compensation to 107 property owners and informed 72 to surrender their properties through a registered gift deed for issuing Transferable Development Rights (TDR) bonds. Twenty-one of them surrendered their properties for TDR bonds, which are being issued online.
Several principals of government and private schools in Delhi on Tuesday said the Directorate of Education (DoE) circular from a day earlier, directing schools to conduct classes in ‘hybrid’ mode, had caused confusion regarding day-to-day operations as they did not know how many students would return to school from Wednesday and how would teachers instruct in two modes — online and in person — at once. The DoE circular on Monday had also stated that the option to “exercise online mode of education, wherever available, shall vest with the students and their guardians”. Several schoolteachers also expressed confusion regarding the DoE order. A government schoolteacher said he was unsure of how to cope with the resumption of physical classes, given that the order directing government offices to ensure that 50% of the employees work from home is still in place. On Monday, the Commission for Air Quality Management in the National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas (CAQM) had, on the orders of the Supreme Court, directed schools in Delhi-NCR to shift classes to the hybrid mode, following which the DoE had issued the circular. The court had urged the Centre’s pollution watchdog to consider restarting physical classes due to many students missing out on the mid-day meals and lacking the necessary means to attend classes online. The CAQM had, on November 20, asked schools in Delhi-NCR to shift to the online mode of teaching.