Realty axis

The Delhi Metro will be chugging into Noida and Ghaziabad before the year is over, while a new line will link peripheral localities such as Nangloi and Peera Garhi to the heart of the city.
The opening of the three new corridors will benefit more than 3 lakh commuters – primarily from densely populated east Delhi pockets such as Preet Vihar, Shakarpur, Laxmi Nagar and Mayur Vihar.

It will also ease the traffic on the perpetually congested Vikas Marg and the ITO and Nizamuddin bridges across the Yamuna.

Other beneficiaries will include the residents of industrial areas in outer Delhi as an extra 37.77 km will be added to the existing network of 80 km. Another 31 new Metro stations will also be opened.

YAMUNA BANK- NOIDA CORRIDOR
The much- awaited 13.1- km corridor will open by the end of August. Another 10 Metro stations have been added to the current Dwarka- Yamuna Bank line, stretching it through Mayur Vihar, deep into the sectors of Noida.

The line will cater to more than 60,000 people who commute daily between the Capital and Noida.

” The civil work is almost over.

We are giving the final touches to the stations,” says Delhi Metro Rail Corporation ( DMRC) spokesman Anuj Dayal.

The corridor is entirely elevated, with the height of the track varying from 8- 13 m. The stations will bear the look of upmarket shopping malls, says Dayal.
The exterior has been constructed using a special technique called Aluminium Composite Panel. Several stations have parking facility.

Adds Dayal: ” The line will pass through the Akshardham temple where the Commonwealth Games Village is being built — thus linking the upcoming Commonwealth Games Village as well. Noida authorities have planed to integrate the line with a light rail transit system. We are preparing a detailed project report on that.”

YAMUNA BANK- ANAND VIHAR CORRIDOR
More than 85 per cent of civil work is complete on this 6.5- km corridor, expected to open in October. It will pass through residential, commercial and institutional areas along Vikas Marg in east Delhi and cater to more than 1 lakh commuters daily.

All its five Metro stations are on an elevated stretch. ” We have undertaken property development at Karkardooma and Anand Vihar Metro stations,” says Dayal. ” The Karkardooma station has five floors, including the basement. The basement will be used for general parking. Property development will be carried out on the ground floor, first floor and concourse, while the platform will be on the top floor.” The Anand Vihar Metro station will be unique, integrating three transport systems – the Metro, the Indian railways and the inter- state bus service.

DMRC is building two of Phase II’s longest spans of 70 m consecutively over the Karkardooma flyover. It has also had to provide an elevation of 6.1 m above the flyover. The line here is thus placed nearly 19 m above ground level – the highest point in the entire Metro system.

INDERLOK- MUNDKA CORRIDOR
This 18.5- km stretch with 16 stations will have 15 elevated and one grade stations catering to about 1.5 lakh people daily. Work was initially expected to finish in March 2010, but the line will open nearly four months ahead of schedule in December 2009.

” All stations will have side platforms except the Inderlok station, which will have an island platform,” says Dayal. ” All stations have been planned for six coaches only. At Peera Garhi, the alignment will be above the flyover, which is 8 m from ground level. So the height of the Metro elevated viaduct at this location will be 16 m from the ground and the depot on this line will be at Mundka.” This corridor will connect Line- 1 and Line- 3. Trains will run on standard gauge, so there won’t be any direct interchange of Line- 1/ 3 with this line. The stations will only be connected by footover bridges and walkways.

Alternate trains originating from Mundka will go to Kirti Nagar and Inderlok. Toilets will be provided in the unpaid area

Source – noidascoope.com

After many of its schemes failed, the Yamuna Expressway Authority has now come up with a new multiple scheme today.
The lands under the scheme are located at 41 km from Greater Noida near Javer town. It will be beneficial to industries like IT, biotech, sports, entertainment and service. The scheme includes plot sizes ranging from 25 to 250 acres. Keeping in mind the global recession, the terms and conditions have been kept very flexible. Conditions with regard to the applicants, payment plan, tax and interest have been relaxed this time.

According to sources, sites have been selected for setting up Yamuna- I race track and residential areas by the side of Yamuna Expressway. The additional CEO of the Yamuna Authority Y.K. Behl said decision about the size and number of plots would be taken soon. The rate of the plots has been fixed at Rs 1,650 per sq mt.

The Yamuma Expressway Authority had earlier floated schemes like mini- SDZ, micro-SDZ and SDZ, but they had to be rolled back as they failed to evoke resonable response.

Source The Tribune

NEW DELHI: Congress has advocated caution over the radical education reforms, with a view that HRD minister Kapil Sibal will have to temper his
tone on issues which are complicated and have wider implications.

With Sibal’s grand announcements kicking up a debate, and with discordant voices within, Congress feels a rash reformist tone was not acceptable. While there is readiness for changing the way education is run in the country, with the Prime Minister fully backing the plans, the opinion is for a calibrated approach.

The leadership is of the view that there cannot be a unilateral push of plans which have the potential to trigger controversies. The proposals like endingboard examinations, single national board and foreign universities need to be debated, lest they embarrass the party and government at a later date. There is a regret that the organisation was not taken into confidence on it.

The party view, confirmed by sources, ties in with the growing opinion aired by leaders. It seems the discordant views, seen as representing an expected scepticism to moves against the status quo, actually have the backing of the party leadership. An array of entrenched AICC leaders, strong ministers and loyalists have questioned the wisdom of Sibal’s proposals for the education sector.

The crucial ministries are now likely to go slow on “reformist” steps being planned in other spheres as well.

Already, one such plan — to repeal section 377 — seems to have generated sound and fury for two days before the possible implications seem to have injected a sense of caution in the party.

The strong religious opinions on Monday saw three key Union ministers call for a wide debate on the issue, with statements that there was no assurance from them on repealing the controversial clause.

Source – Timesofindia.com

Source

Hyderabad (IANS): Reforms, not concessions, hold the key to agricultural growth in India, farmers’ representatives told the Finance Ministry in the run up to the budget 2009-10.

Farmers want financial reforms to ensure credit flow, a good risk mitigation system, an efficient extension services mechanism and fair prices, the Consortium of Indian Farmers Associations (CIFA), an apex body of various farmers’ groups, told Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in pre-budget discussions recently.

They also urged the government to raise public spending and allow private investment in agriculture and take steps to curb the rampant cheating in markets.

“Indian farmers want respect and dignity. They don’t want to go on begging. Year after year, state or central governments go on making us look like beggars,” P. Chengal Reddy, secretary general of CIFA told IANS.

He feels that Indian farmers has the capability to become globally competitive provided the government liberates agriculture from its clutches.

“(Prime Minister) Manmohan Singh wants liberalisation but he and his team men deliberately tried to avoid liberating the agriculture sector from controls,” Mr. Chengal Reddy said. “You still have essential commodities act, you don’t allow inter-state movement, free value addition, exports and contract farming on long sustained basis and you are also not able to do procurements.”

If the proposed reforms were undertaken, the farm sector could achieve 4 per cent growth rate, Mr. Chengal Reddy said.

He added that farmers were being treated as “second class citizens” in the country. “We toil, we take risk and suffer but at the end of the day we don’t get good price.”

Added S. Malla Reddy, Andhra Pradesh Rythu Sangham secretary: “Indian farmers are unhappy today because the successive governments have failed to implement minimum support prices (MSP) for their produce.” Rythu Sangham is an Andhra Pradesh-based farmers’ organisation.

“The middlemen are cheating them in the market and the government is not able to do anything about it,” he complained.

According to Mr. Malla Reddy, most of the government’s farmer-oriented schemes are not reaching the deserving hands.

“The crop loans are not available to small and marginal farmers. The eligible farmers were not benefited even under the massive loan waiver scheme announced by the government last year.”

The authorities have also failed to ensure supply of uninterrupted electricity and quality seeds, he added.

“After 1997, the seed sector has been dominated by multi-national companies, which are supplying spurious and sub-standard seeds. The farmers who are suffering huge crop losses are not getting compensation from these corporations,” said Mr. Malla Reddy.

Calling India’s agricultural condition “pathetic”, Mr. Chengal Reddy said the country has to take lessons from China.

“China’s growth rate in agriculture is 7 to 9 per cent, whereas India’s agriculture growth rate is pathetic for the last 15 to 20 years. We never crossed 2 per cent,” he said.

Though the government has claimed that more credit is being released for farmers, it is not reaching tenant or landless farm families which constitute 50 per cent of the country’s 120 million farm families.

The share of small farm loans (Rs 25,000 or less) in agriculture credit has come down from 50 per cent in 1990 to 11 per cent in 2007. During the same period, the share of loans worth Rs 1 crore has or above skyrocketed by more than 400 per cent.

Source – The Hindu

The Greater Noida Authority (GNIDA) has introduced two major changes in its masterplan-2021.

The masterplan now includes a expressway from Dadri to Mumbai (western freight corridor) and Ganga Expressway from Greater Noida to Baliya.

As these expressways will meet at Dadri, a big junction is being set up at Dadri. The 78th board meeting of the GNIDA had approved the proposal for changes in the masterplan.

According to sources, the Railway Budget has already sanctioned the amount needed for setting up the western freight corridor, which will start from Dadri will pass through Greater Noida, Noida, Delhi and Gujarat. It will be connected to Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust in Mumbai.

The eastern freight corridor is planned from Ludhiana in Punjab to Kolkata. Work on this project had started in Patna on February 10. This corridor from Ludhiana will pass through Ambala, Saharanpur, Meerut, Hapur, Dadri, Khurja, Aligarh, Etawah, Kanpur, Allahabad, Mughalsarai and Jharkhand. It will be connected to Dinkini in West Bengal.

According to the masterplan, nearly 5.5-km of Ganga Expressway falls in Greater Noida. It touches Taj Expressway near Jaganpur-Afzalpur village and passes through Bulandshahr, Amarpur, Rawada, Allauda, Sarkpur, Bilaspur, Talara, Harniya, Bhore and Ber village. From Narora in Bulandshahr it will go to Gautam Budh Nagar, covering a distance of 94 km. About 900 hectares is being acquired in Gautam Budh Nagar for this purpose.

Source – The Tribune

Largest public sector construction company to come up with residential buildings in Capital While Delhi’s population has increased from 1.38 crore in 2001 to 1.62 crore in 2006, the DDA managed to add only 13,000 houses in the intervening period.

some good news for Delhi residents who want to buy their dream home.

The National Building Construction Corporation Limited (NBCC), the largest public sector construction company, will launch its first housing scheme in the Capital early next year.

Up for grabs would be 2,500 flats,priced between Rs 25 lakh and Rs 60 lakh.

The NBCC has built several infrastructure projects across the country. One such project in the Capital is the Pitampura TV Tower.

It entered the real estate sector recently. The first residential housing project that it started was in Rajarhat, Kolkata, known as VIGYOR Towers.

In the Capital, the flats will come up on 30 acres of land adjoining the Ghitorni metro station on the MehrauliGurgaon road. They will be ready by 2012.

Speaking to HT, Arup Roy Choudhury, chairman and managing director of NBCC said, “We have a land in Ghitorni, which we are planning to develop for residential housing. Details are being worked out for the housing project which will be launched early next year.” This would be the PSU’s first housing project in Delhi.

“There is a huge shortage of housing in urban areas. We ventured into the sector to fill the huge demand-supply gap in the housing sector by providing affordable housing,” said Choudhury.

Earlier this year, the construction company had launched two housing schemes — in the mid and low-end category at Gurgaon in Haryana and Loni in Uttar Pradesh.

It is coming up with 4,000 flats in Gurgaon for employees of the Central government and public sector units.

The flats are priced between Rs 22 lakh and Rs 45 lakh.

Similarly, in Loni 2,000 flats are being developed in the mid segment category.

Fifty per cent of the flats will be reserved for government employees. The rest will be open to the public. These flats are priced between Rs 7 lakh and Rs 15 lakh.

Presently, there is a huge shortage of affordable housing in the Capital with the Delhi Development Authority — the sole development body in the city — failing to meet the housing requirement.

Source – HT