GMADA Expert Group Clears Land For 7 Mohali Sector Roads GMADA विशेषज्ञ समूह ने मोहाली की 7 सेक्टर सड़कों को मंज़ूरी दी GMADA ਮਾਹਿਰ ਸਮੂਹ ਨੇ ਮੋਹਾਲੀ ਦੀਆਂ 7 ਸੈਕਟਰ ਸੜਕਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਮਨਜ਼ੂਰੀ ਦਿੱਤੀ

GMADA has moved seven of its master plan roads one step closer to acquisition. On the fourth of November the authority put up seven letters from the Land Acquisition Collector at PUDA Bhawan, each disclosing what an expert group had recommended about the land needed for one road. All seven say the same thing. The expert group found that each road serves a public purpose and that its likely benefits outweigh its social costs. It also found the land proposed is the least the road needs, and it recommended acquisition.

The roads run through the sectors that are still mostly fields on the GMADA plan, from the belt between Landran and the airport road to the edge of Kharar. Together the seven letters touch about twenty villages.

Which roads the letters cover

Each letter names a road by its width and by the sectors it divides. The widest is a two hundred foot road between Sectors Ninety Three and Ninety Four on one side and One Hundred and Twelve and One Hundred and Thirteen on the other, on land in Landran. The longest is a road of one hundred and seventy feet that divides the sectors from One Hundred and Twenty to One Hundred and Twenty Five, running for almost six kilometres through Badmajra, Kharar, Chungiyan, Behlolpur and a string of villages between them.

The others are narrower. A road of about one hundred and thirty feet separates Sectors Ninety Four and Ninety Five from One Hundred and Eleven and One Hundred and Twelve, across Bairmajra, Landran and Lendi. Roads of one hundred feet divide Sectors Ninety Five and Ninety Six from One Hundred and Ten and One Hundred and Eleven, and separate Sector One Hundred and Thirteen from One Hundred and Fourteen. Another of the same width runs along the block from One Hundred and Fifteen to One Hundred and Twenty Seven near Balomajra and Chaju Majra. The seventh letter covers what it calls the balance portion of land for a road of about one hundred and sixty four feet between Sectors Eighty Two and Eighty Three, in Manauli.

That last one is a finishing job. The wording means part of the land for the road between Sectors Eighty Two and Eighty Three was dealt with earlier, and this letter covers only what is left.

What the expert group stage is

The letters are issued under section seven of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act. That section comes after the social impact assessment. Once a study of the project has been prepared with the gram sabhas and put to a public hearing, the government sends the report to an independent expert group. The group has two months to say whether the project serves a public purpose and whether its benefits outweigh its social costs.

The group's recommendation has to be made public. That is what the fourth of November letters are. Each one asks the sarpanch to paste a copy at the village gurdwara, temple, mosque and other well-known places, and asks GMADA's information technology wing to put it on the authority's website.

If the group had found against a project, the Act would have required the government to record its reasons in writing before going ahead. For these seven roads it found in favour, so the next step is the government's own decision on the social impact report and the expert group's view. After that comes the preliminary notification under section eleven.

What has not happened yet

None of the seven roads is under a preliminary notification yet. That matters for anyone holding land on these alignments. The ban on selling or mortgaging notified land without the Collector's approval starts only with section eleven. Until it is published, land along these routes can still be sold and registered in the ordinary way, even though the government has now been told the roads are justified.

The letters give no area and no compensation figure. The road lengths are approximate, stated in kilometres in the notice titles. The khasra-by-khasra detail will appear with the preliminary notification, and the compensation only with the award under section twenty-five, which comes a long way down the line.

Why sector roads come before the sectors

A sector in Mohali's plan is a block bounded by roads. The plan fixes the roads first, at set widths, and the sectors fill in between them. Where GMADA builds a scheme itself, as in Aerotropolis or the older Phases, it takes the land for the roads along with the rest. Where private colonisers have licences inside a sector, as across much of the belt from Sector One Hundred and Ten to One Hundred and Twenty Seven, the colonies depend on GMADA acquiring the land for the dividing roads around them.

That is why these letters matter to people who have never owned a field. A licensed colony in Sector One Hundred and Sixteen or One Hundred and Seventeen can build its own streets, but its connection to the rest of the city runs along the master plan roads at its edges. Our report on [the corporation's new limits](/article/408-is-aerocity-inside-the-mohali-corporation-what-the-new-limits-cover-and-what-they-leave-out) sets out which of these sectors are now inside the city and which are still outside it.

What the villages are being asked

The letters are addressed to the Deputy Commissioner and copied down the revenue chain to each sarpanch. They are notices, not hearings. A landowner on one of these alignments has already had the social impact hearing, and the next chance to object formally comes after the preliminary notification, when section fifteen allows sixty days.

Several of the villages named, Landran and Badmajra among them, are the same places that were caught up in the argument over the Mohali corporation's limits late last year. The roads and the city limits are separate processes, run by different departments under different laws, but the same households are dealing with both.

The open points

The exact area each road needs is not yet known, and neither is the date of the preliminary notifications. Whether GMADA will offer land pooling on any of these alignments, as it has on some earlier schemes, is also open. The fourth of November letters close the expert group stage. The section eleven notifications are the documents to watch for next.

Sources: The sources we use are listed on our Editorial Sources page.

This piece explains where the seven road acquisitions stand under the land acquisition law. It gives no legal advice, and the position of any parcel turns on the notified khasra list and its own records.