Police keen to get private property for KP station

Top cop to visit three plots shortlisted for setting up the Koregaon Park police station
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Two and a half years after the German Bakery blast, Koregaon Park still awaits a police station. On the second anniversary of the blast, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan and Divisional Commissioner Dilip Band had promised that the land plot for the police station would be finalised soon.


Koregaon police chowky. File pics

But the promise appears to have vanished into thin air. The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) is still not ready to part with the land plot that Chavan and Band had eyed. So, the city police have set sights on a private land plot on the North Main Road.


Promised land: The plot that the PMC had allotted for Koregaon police
station but has not given to the authorities.

With this, the quest for land Koregaon Park is still going on. Senior cops are planning to visit three land plots which they feel would apt for the proposed police station. "The PMC is neither giving us any of their plots nor are they denying any land.

We are ready to accept any land plot that they are willing to give us. We want to start early as the Koregaon Park police station, once started, will help us curb crime," said Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Anant Shinde, who presently has the additional responsibility of administration.

"On Monday we are visiting the Koregaon Park area to finalise a land plot suitable for starting a police station. We are keen about a land plot belonging to a private individual and earlier asked the PMC to acquire it. But we are ready to accept any other plot which the civic body will give us," Shinde said.

Will they act?
In February 2010, then Commissioner of Police Dr Satyapal Singh had sent a proposal to start the police station on a private land just opposite to the German Bakery.

But a year later, this February, Band asked the PMC to give a part of the plotu00a0-- about 300m from f the German Bakery -- kept vacant for the expansion of sewage treatment plant.

"Even after Band's letter, the PMC refused to hand over the part of the plot in their possession. Either the PMC is delaying the process or the government has cheated the residents of Koregaon Park," said Yogesh Pingle, an activist from the area.