Modi,Maya refuse land for central institutes

LDA earlier proposed to allot 10 acres for institute in Lucknow but had demanded Rs 28 crore for it.

With both the Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat governments refusing to allot land at below-market rates for setting up two new Central Detective Training School,the Centre is now doing a re-think on the institutes.

When the proposal for the two institutes was being finalised under the 11th Five-Year Plan,both the state governments Mayawati-headed Bahujan Samaj Party in UP and Narendra Modi-led BJP government in Gujarat – had indicated that they would provide land at nominal rates.

The initial plan,firmed up in the wake of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks,was to make the new schools,aimed at imparting advanced training to junior and mid-level police officers in combating terrorism and modern crimes,especially of the hi-tech kind,operational within one-and-a-half years. If the two schools are not made operational by next year,the funds sanctioned under the Plan would lapse.

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As a result of the failure of the two state governments to provide land required for establishing the schools,the MHA is now finalising a proposal to shift the proposed institutes to other locations.

Sources in the MHA told The Indian Express that it has now been decided to shift the detective school proposed for Lucknow to Ghaziabad near the national Capital,where the Union Ministry of Urban Development is being prevailed upon to provide 10 acres of land near the CBI Academy.

The Lucknow Development Authority (LDA) had earlier proposed to allot about 10 acres land for the project in Lucknow but had asked Rs 28 crore as value of the land. Despite a series of requests by the top functionaries of MHA,the Mayawati government refused to intervene to allot land on cheaper rate. As per the plan,under which the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had sanctioned Rs 44 crore for the two institutes to be set up in Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh) and Ahmedabad (Gujarat),a sum of Rs 1 crore had been set aside as cost of land for each of the two institutes.

In the case of Gujarat,land was proposed to be allotted in Ahmedabad but the government wanted Rs 28 crore for the same. Later,after Union Home Minister P Chidambaram took up the matter with Chief Minister Narendra Modi,the price was reduced by about Rs six crores. Sources told The Indian Express that sometime back,Chidambaram wrote to Modi,seeking his intervention to allot the land at low cost. But,there has been no favourable response from Modi. We are now considering a proposal to shift the proposed institute to either Goa or Maharashtra, said a MHA functionary.

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There are three Central Detective Training School in Chandigarh,Hyderabad and Kolkata. The two new institutes at Lucknow and Ahmedabad were to train officials from Central and Western India,respectively.

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