AAF proposes to downsize its area for Vedant University

Puri, Nov 23 (UNI) The Anil Agarwal Foundation(AAF) has decided to reduce the area of Vedant University on the Puri-Konark marine drive area.

The Foundation has already signed a MoU with the Orissa government to set up an international standard University over an area of 8000 acres at an estimated cost of Rs 15,000 crores.

According to Additional District Magistrate P K Pani, the AAF is trying to avoid displacement problem and agreed to exclude human habitations(villages) from their project area.

During a recent field survey, the area required for the project has been reduced to 6000 acres. It excluded Paniurali and Garavingura village areas from its land acquisition list, Mr Pani said.

Out of six thousand acres, about 1200 acres belonged to the government land while over 1500 acres were identified as Jagannath temple land.

The AAF, sources said, has already placed Rs five crore with the district authorities to meet the land acquisition costs. The notification for land acquisition would be published shortly, officials said.

Meanwhile, CPI leaders Prafulla Chandra Misra and Pradipta Mohanty, former Puri Legislator Umaballav Rath and Priyadarshan Pattnaik from Congress and Adityahruday Mishra of Orissa Gana Parishad(OGP) have started organising the villagers likely to be displaced in the proposed University project, to resist government attempt to acquire land for the Vedanta University.

They have questioned the requirement of such huge area for the varsity when world's famous universities were built over less than a thousand acres.

''Poor villagers would become landless and would be robbed of their livelihood,'' Benudhar Pradhan, a senior farmer leader of the area, said.

The residents of Puri, particularly the priest community, have a major portion of land in the proposed University site and were eager to sell their land as they hardly receive any crop from the land.

But the villagers of Gaindol, apprehensive of losing their livelihood, have decided to resort to agitation.

According to Ashok Kumar Das, a senior advocate, AAF were unlikely to get any financial benefit from the land acquisition proceeds as the record of right stands recorded in favour of the Sri Jagannath temple.

The land serves as life line for the villagers as they were cultivating since generations without having any title over it and never tried to get their name included in the tenancy ledger of the revenue department, Mr Das said.

Local legislator Maheswar Mohanty and the BJD district president Shankershan Parida have meanwhile, conducted several meetings to win confidence of the people of the affected villages to welcome the project which they maintained would be beneficial for the entire state and the villagers.

UNI XC-DP JYN VD DB2119