Hand over complex to Naga entrepreneurs
Rising People’s Party (RPP) has asked the state government to make operational the Shopping Complex &Parking Plaza at Forest Colony, Dimapur.
Asserting that it would oppose any move by the state government to privatise the complex, RPP instead demanded that the state government should hand over the complex to Naga entrepreneurial community through a Memorandum of Understanding.
Having declared meaningless “Year of Farmers” and “Year of Entrepreneurs” in the past, RPP suggested that the government could now actually empower a generation of young entrepreneurs with concrete action. It also appealed to the Naga entrepreneurial community to take ownership of the issue.
RPP also said it was opposed to the forest department managing the complex since the connection between the two was “dubious”.
Based on the reply furnished in response to its RTI, RPP said the decision to construct the shopping complex and parking plaza at Forest Colony, Dimapur was taken at State Planning Board meeting held at chief minister’s office on June 9, 2011.
The complex was built with funding from the ministry of urban development and HUDCOat a cost of Rs 43 Crore. Thus, the party pointed out that according to the RTI reply, the State Planning and Co-ordination department/State Planning Board conceptualised and built the complex in forest department’s land, which in turn was funded by the Urban Ministry.
Interestingly, RPP said the forest department claimed in the RTI reply that it owned the complex.
Mentioning that nowhere in the world forest department/ministry managed shopping complexes, the party said it suspected that the building was already in the hands of a private entity, which also meant that the government’s intention was clear and “insidious” right from the beginning.
Having constructed the shopping plaza on a government land belonging to the forest department, the party alleged that “powers-be” wanted a private entity to manage the shopping complex as a private property. But due to public outcry at that time over the actual ownership of the complex, this could not be made functional and thus over the years the complex had grown derelict.
“This case is a powerful example of wastage of public resources and the State being run as a fiefdom,” RPP stated.