Textile mill museum to take off as state promises aid

An official from the CM’s office said the finances for the project are being finetuned. “It was discussed in the meeting that the project should be partly funded by the state government. The implementing agency,however,will be the BMC,” said the official.

A member of BMC’s improvements committee said at the committee meeting on Thursday,the BMC was supposed to present a masterplan for the museum for elected members’ approval. But the presentation was not made,and instead,officials conveyed to the committee that the BMC was not keen on carrying out the project.

“They argued that the project is expensive and building a museum is not an obligatory duty for the civic body,” said the member,a corporator from the suburbs.

Meanwhile,BMC’s spat with the National Textile Corporation (NTC) over the latter asking it to return a part of the land in United Mills compound in Kalachowkie has also been resolved. While the BMC did not want to return a part of the land that the NTC had handed over on an advanced surrender basis,the state government on Thursday said the BMC will have to return the land.

The museum plan failed to take off even after the preparation of the conceptual plan more than a year ago,owing to several issues. Municipal architects maintain they have not been able to prepare a masterplan since the BMC did not know exactly how much land or precisely which part of the plot it will be housed on.

The NTC had handed over the United Mills 2 and 3 land (measuring 61,000 square metres) to the BMC as per the one-third land-sharing formula decided by the High Court. However,after actually calculating the share that BMC deserves,the NTC said it wanted 17,000 square metres back since BMC’s share worked up to 44,000 square metres.

“A part of the mill land has heritage structures that cannot be demolished. So we obviously need to know which part of the mill land we will get to make the masterplan,” said a municipal architect in charge of the project.

As mill structures protected as listed heritage structures cannot be demolished,the BMC and the NTC both wanted to give away the portion of the land housing the structures they deemed inconvenient.

Additional municipal commissioner Aseem Gupta said the BMC wanted the land without the heritage structures. “But since the land is owned by NTC we cannot choose which part we want. We will build the museum on whichever portion of land we get,” said Gupta.

The plot is reserved for a recreation ground and the museum will come up on a part of this land.