Gadkari demands jail land from CM for developing marketplace

Nagpur: After dropping Inter-Modal Station (IMS) project at Ajni, Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Saturday reiterated his demand to chief minister Eknath Shinde for handing over Central Jail’s land to his Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH) for developing it into a world class marketplace.
Delivering his address during inauguration and foundation laying ceremonies of Maharashtra Rail Infrastructure Development Corporation’s (MRIDC) various projects, the city MP said already ₹1,200 crore were sanctioned from the Centre for the project, and they had even identified the alternate land outside the city for shifting the jail.

“The jail land is a centre place where people can spend quality time in the evening if properly developed. Besides a market, there would be a garden and other amenities with adequate parking space.”
Emphasizing that he and deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis had envisaged making Nagpur an international passenger and cargo hub, Gadkari said a big logistic park was coming up at Sindi dry port. “We plan to shift the Food Corporation of India’s (FCI) godowns there. It will reduce the traffic and pollution in the city. A big area would be then available for the development that would also include Irrigation Colony. Fadnavis had also sanctioned ₹1,000 crore for a logistic park in the city in his budget. It would have all the modern amenities like shops, banks and restaurants.”
While requesting CM Eknath Shinde to expedite clearance for Nagpur airport’s modernization, whose case was pending in the Supreme Court, Gadkari said it would expedite their plans of turning the city into a multimodal hub.
“I have sanctioned ₹500 crore under CRF for concretization of various roads in the city. A new underpass from Zero Mile to Tekdi Ganesh temple would be built from it,” he said.