Coimbatore: Land acquisition for the much-awaited airport expansion is likely to commence soon as officials are all set to strike a deal with the land owners after taking into account their demands.
On Thursday, tahsildar for land acquisition met the residents to understand their needs.
Land acquisition commissioner and concerned state government officials will on Friday hold talks with the residents of Chiniampalayam, Neelambur and Sulur to sort out the differences.
"The land acquisition commissioner along with other officials of the state government will visit the area and speak to the residents to arrive at a conclusion regarding the land acquisition. We expect the officials to take a call that will keep the residents happy," a district administration official told TOI.
Industrialist Vijay Vikraman said the tahsildar visited them to understand their needs. "We told him that the state government has only listened to the issues of land owners in the area. But there are more than 5,000 people who own houses and industries on the land earmarked for the project. If the state government does not address their issues, the land acquisition cannot take place," he said.
The tahsildar has informed the residents about the visit of government officials. On Friday around 3pm, land acquisition commissioner will hear pleas from the residents and industrialists of the area.
This will be one of the first major land acquisitions for an infrastructure project in the state after the new land acquisition legislation was passed in 2013. While the norms prescribe two times the market value of land in urban areas, the land owners had been alleging that the money offered by the district administration as compensation was not even half of the market value.
The state government wasn't willing to provide the market value to the land owners and had been trying to settle the matter by offering the guideline value.
According to realty players, the guideline value of agricultural land in the region is just Rs 35,000 per cent and Rs 65,000 per cent for residential land. However, the market value of agricultural land is Rs 8 lakh per cent and Rs 14 lakh for per cent residential land.
The land acquisition process had been going on for the past 10 years, but with little progress as land owners were not ready to give away their land at throw away prices.
