Residents against electric posts on the road

KOCHI: The residents around the Karshaka Road are up in arms against the authorities for what they claim to be an encroachment on the road. The encroachment consists of KSEB’s electric posts intruding onto the public road.  The councillors and residential associations of the area have repeatedly filed complaints on the issue with the Corporation and ministries concerned.The residents in the area claim that the KSEB had built the electric posts for the benefit of the Karthika Residency, a hotel on the east side of the South railway station. In his letter to KSEB deputy chief engineer, the councillor of the area said, “The public road which was built after acquiring land from the residents is now encroached for the benefit of the owner of Karthika Residency.” “The electric posts were built after it was found that the hotel could not meet its power requirements. As of now, a large portion of the road is left untarred. The PWD has begun the work for extending the tarred area, but when you have an encroachment like this, with an intrusion of 4-metres onto the road, it will not be possible for us to have a wider road. We have filed complaints repeatedly. In fact, even before the transformer was built, the previous councillor had written a letter asking the authorities to prevent such a construction. In spite of this, no action has been taken,” said K J Jacob, councillor of  Gandhinagar.The widening of the Karshaka Road was done under the ‘Detailed Town Planning Scheme for Ernakulam South Commercial Centre.’ Many of the residents had given up their land for the widening of the road. “The decision to open up the eastern corridor of the South railway station was taken up to decongest Ernakulam city. To facilitate the widening, land was acquired from several private parties including the Hindusthan Petroleum. The Corporation or the KSEB does not have any right to acquire the land for a road that is to benefit a private party, says the letter by the Karithala Vikasana Samithi addressed to the secretary of Cochin Corporation.But when contacted, the hotel denied the charge and said that the hotel meets its power requirements solely from a transformer housed within the hotel’s compound. “We have no use of a transformer like that. In fact, if there is such a transformer then the concerned authorities can remove it. We have built our transformer with our own money”, said the MD of Karthika Residency.ICWAI president M Gopalakrishnan inaugurates a seminar on Cost Audit Report Rules and Cost Accounting Standards in Kochi