With residents of Phursungi and Uruli Devachi villages giving up their agitation against the dumping of garbage, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has come up with a plan to compensate the villagers by ensuring jobs to one member of each project affected family. While this will be in addition to the compensation for the land acquired, the minimum land area that a family should have lost to the project has been kept at 10 acres.

“The civic administration has proposed a job to one member of each family that has been affected due to the PMC acquiring their land,” said assistant municipal commissioner Suresh Jagtap,

As per the BPMC Act, the PMC normally compensates for the land acquired for any project in its jurisdiction by way of giving TDR, FSI or monetary benefit. However, the PMC has no powers other than to provide monetary compensation to the landowner whose land is acquired by PMC.

“It is not possible to give TDR or FSI to the land owners. The land owners are not found to be satisfied with mere monetary benefit and in turn end up opposing any project,” the proposal said.

The opposition leads to problem in acquiring land for the project and in turn delays the execution of the project. It further increases the project cost, he said.

Therefore, it has been proposed by the PMC that in addition to monetary benefit, a job to one member of each family that loses at least 10 acre of land for the PMC project will help in acquiring the land. The PMC, under the resettlement policy of the Union government, can recruit the project-affected person in the available vacant position as per the educational qualification of the post.

... contd.