A plot of land on which garages had mushroomed in New Town’s Action Area III has been cleared up. Well, almost.
The New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) now intends to set up a perimeter fence to prevent fresh encroachments.
The authority that provides civic services to New Town has managed to remove around 25 makeshift garages that had come up on the parcel of land near DLF New Town Heights and Elita Garden Vista housing complexes over the past few years.
The garages were not only encroaching on the plot but the owners and mechanics used to park cars that came for repairs on the service lane, blocking it completely and rendering it useless for vehicles and pedestrians.
Many of these cars were junked and condemned.
On Wednesday, Metro visited the plot and spotted at least five cars that were rusty, had missing wheels and did not have windshields or windows.
Junked vehicles have been marked as potential breeding grounds for the dengue-causing Aedes aegypti mosquito by experts as freshwater accumulates in them.
A senior NKDA official said they had notified the owners and mechanics who used to run the garages to remove such vehicles from the lane.
“They have been given time till next week to remove the vehicles. If they don’t, we will be forced to intervene and remove the cars keeping in mind the legalities of the process,” said the official.
Work on fencing the area is expected to start in the next couple of weeks, the official said.
The owners of the units that have been removed will be allowed to set up shop in an area beside Sukhobrishti bus terminus, around 800m from where they were earlier. They will be housed in a single hangar-like structure with partitions.
The units razed by NKDA were made of flammable items like plastic sheets, bamboo poles and plywood. The structures posed a fire threat as most units used to store fuel and other lubricants in the open, the official said.
