In a change of stance, the state home department has decided to look into its own move to shift out the Yerawada police station on the Pune-Ahmednagar road and allow commercial exploitation of the three-acre plot on which it stands. It may be recalled that the state home department had all along ignored protests from the Pune police against shifting out the police station.
Incidentally, the home department had entered into an agreement for the re-development of the plot with D B Realty, the Mumbai-based real estate company whose managing director Shahid Balwa has been arrested by the CBI in the 2G spectrum allocation scam. The plot was to be re-developed on a public private partnership (PPP) basis.
According to earlier reports, D B Realty had purchased a large piece of land next to the plot where the police station is. The company had felt it would be able to develop its property better if it took over the three-acre plot. According to the agreement between the state government and D B Realty, the police station was to be shifted to an adjacent piece of land and the developer would also build 500 police quarters elsewhere.
Additional chief secretary (home) Umesh Chandra Sarangi said, “We have received objections from the Pune police against allowing the developer (D B Realty) to develop the police station’s land. We have not handed over the plot to the developer yet. We will examine the objections before taking a final decision on whether the land is required to be handed over to the developer.” The stand taken by home department comes as a moral victory for the Pune police because Sarangi’s predecessors had snubbed top police officers when they had objected to the deal.
