The proposed widening of Irwin Road in the city has gained fresh traction with the Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) expediting land acquisition and paying spot compensation for it.
On Tuesday, the authorities also began demolition of the existing properties on the acquired land. Earlier in the day, district in-charge Minister G.T. Deve Gowda, local area MLA L. Nagendra and others performed the Guddali Puja to take up the road-widening work.
MCC Commissioner K.H. Jagadeesh said there are 84 properties along the stretch and all the owners have agreed to part with their lands.
The government had fixed a compensation at ₹13,072 a sq ft, excluding the value of the building. For this, ₹37 crore has been earmarked. Nearly 25,800 sq ft of land has to be acquired, according to the MCC Commissioner.
The land acquisition is expected to be completed by January 15, 2019, while the road-widening works will be completed by April 2019. The MCC will incur an additional cost of around ₹4.5 crore for widening the 850-metre stretch of the road from Ayurvedic College Circle to Arch Gate on B.N. Road.
Irwin Road is one of the busiest roads in the city and connects the suburban bus stand to the city railway station. But it is also choked with vehicles, given the dense commercial growth along the stretch, thus making road expansion difficult.
Partly widened
Though the proposal for it was conceived four years ago, only a portion of the stretch — from Railway Station to Ayurvedic College Circle — had been widened, in addition to the stretch between Nehru Circle where the main post office is located to the Arch Gate opposite the suburban bus stand. This was the easy part of the project as it entailed little or no land acquisition.
But more challenging was the stretch from Ayurvedic College Circle to Nehru Circle, which is around 650 metres in length and is both narrow and very commercially developed.
However, the MCC has not only managed to secure the consent of commercial property owners but has also convinced the stakeholders of three places of worship — two temples and a mosque — to cooperate. A portion of land belonging to Cauvery Emporium, a government property, is also being acquired.
According to the detailed project report, the existing Irwin Road, which is between 9 and 11 metres wide, will be extended to 18 metres sideways. The stretch will be a four-lane road and this is expected to ease traffic congestion to a large extent.
There has been opposition to the project from Mysore Grahakara Parishat (MGP) on the grounds that heritage buildings on the stretch would be damaged. But the authorities have pressed ahead with it citing the exigency created by the increase in vehicle population.