Building Promoters Eyeing Agricultural & Industrial Lands
With hardly any residential sites available in the city and suburbs, realtors and building promoters here are eyeing agricultural and industrial lands for constructing apartments and multi storey buildings. In November alone the Coimbatore Corporation has received several applications for approval to convert around 25 acres of agricultural and industrial lands into residential and mixed residential area.
A major chunk of lands falls in Ganapathi, linking Sathy main road, Thelungupalayam, linking Thondamuthur-Coimbatore main road and R S Puram and belong to private industries. During January this year, nearly 40 acres of agri and industrial lands, mostly in Singanallur and Ramanathapuram areas linking Trichy National Highway and also areas linking Mettupalayam main road, were approved for constructing multi-storey buildings. Agricultural lands in Thudiyalur, Narasimanaickanpalayam, Periyanaickanpalayam and Karamadai and Saravanampatti are the hot favourites for the realtors and developers.
Construction is going on very fast in every nook and corner of the city. Most of the structures are unauthorised. It is not the fault of the owners but the Corporation is to be blamed for delaying the approval of building plan, P Rajkumar, AIADMK Coimbatore councillor said. Normally, builders apply to the corporation for construction , and wait for sometime but the corporatione town planning wing would not respond. The vexed citizens would go ahead with the construction.
To sort out the issue, the Corporation should form a joint committee and set a deadline, minimum 30 days, for approval, he added. He also expressed the fear that as the officials were not checking the safety measures in mega commercial complexes and departmental stores, the fate of Chennai Saravana Stores, where a fire broke out, charring to death its employees, may befall the Coimbatore tall buildings.
