After the decision on providing an alternative route to the residents, the GDA has earmarked the route from the society to NH-24.
For more than eight years, residents of Amrapali Village have been waiting to get a direct connectivity to NH-24 which was promised to them by the Ghaziabad Development Authority (GDA). Good news is that their wait is finally going to be over in coming few months.
After the decision on providing an alternative route to the residents, the GDA has earmarked the route from the society to NH-24.
Starting from the JH tower of the society, the new route would be a 64 meters long and 9 meters wide road. “It will run diagonally and would converge at the upcoming slip road of NH-24 which is next to an under-construction underpass of the highway,” told Deepak Kumar, president of Residents Welfare Association (RWA) of the society.
GDA officials told City Spidey that the construction of this route would start after the results of general elections are declared.
The move has come five months after a meeting which happened between residents and GDA officials over the new route. Both the parties reached to consensus in the meeting. While GDA had assured earmarking of the route in following week of the meeting, it took the authority over five months to finally execute it.
Meanwhile, elated with the development, the residents performed bhoomi-pujan, a Hindu tradition of offering prayers before a construction work, of the land and started construction of their new gate on Sunday.
For the residents, it was a long battle. “We have been fighting with GDA and builder to get the connectivity which was promised when we started living in the society,” said Maheshwaran Nair, secretary of the RWA.
After the construction, the road will put an end to the years long misery of residents. Due to the unavailability of a direct connecting road, the residents had no option but to go through day-to-day struggle of passing through a narrow lane to commute from the society.
At the beginning, a road perpendicular to the backyard of the society and merging directly to the NH-24 was planned by the GDA and the builder. But, the challenge was to acquire private land for it. The builder had promised that it would acquire the land.
Later, the proposition of constructing a service road from UP Gate till the society came from the GDA itself. The construction of a 36-meter wide service road was stopped 800 meters before the society, again, owing to the unavailability of the land.
Both the GDA and builder failed to acquire the land, which is being used as plastic dump yard where sorting for the recycling happens.
As a result, the residents are now forced to use a cemented road to Kala Patthar to finally reach NH 24. “Entering and exiting our society has become an uphill task. The narrow lane that we use right now has become very congested. It takes us around 20-25 minutes to reach NH-24, which will otherwise take two minutes if we get this connecting road,” said a resident.
After failing to deliver the originally proposed road connecting Amrapali Village to NH-24 eight years after the society was opened, the GDA came up with the alternative plan in December. The officials suggested an alternative route which will pass through the land near society’s JH Tower and adjoining GDA park.
