After setting up the office of the Women Power Line in the administrative block of the Ambedkar Samajik Parivartan Sthal, the Akhilesh Yadav government is now planning to utilise another project of Mayawati rule for public utility service.
According to official sources, the parking lot of the Rama Bai Rally Sthal will soon be converted into an inter-state bus terminal.
The 40-acre parking lot is situated between Rae Bareli Road and Sultanpur Road and can easily accommodate 700 buses at a time. The standard area needed for a bus terminal is about five acres.
“We can have a food complex, a dormitory type waiting room and even a tiny shopping complex in this area where transit passengers can refresh themselves,” said an official who is preparing the blueprint for the bus terminal.
The BSP government had proposed four parking lots to serve the Rama Bai Rally Sthal in 2008.
The parking lots categorised as P1, P2 and P3, with a combined area of around 150 acres, were situated along the Bijnor road near the rally ground while the fourth, P4, was allocated on a land owned by the UP Housing and Development Board.
Three parking lots, P1, P2 and P3, were on land acquired from farmers, who have been up in arms since then while the land for P4 lot was acquired through a notification issued by the BSP government.
The Samajwadi Party government, in July this year, de-notified the other three while leaving out P4 which was situated on a government land.
A committee headed by Lucknow district magistrate Anurag Yadav has now suggested conversion of the said parking lot into an inter-state bus-terminal. “The scale and size of political rallies has declined over the years and so there was no use for having such a massive parking lot,” an official remarked.
He further said that the strategic location of the terminal was ideal for an inter-state bus terminal that would not disturb the city traffic. The proposed terminal is situated close to Shaheed Path which essentially connects the four national highways — Faizabad Road, Rae Bareli Road, Sultanpur Road and Kanpur Road.
At present, Lucknow has one inter-state bus terminus at Alambagh but it offers just one service — from Lucknow to Jaipur.
The Samajwadi Party during its election campaign had repeatedly said that if it came to power it would use the vacant spaces in parks and memorials to build public utilities.
Earlier this month, the government set up the office of the newy-launched Women Power Line in the building in the Ambedkar Samajik Parivartan Sthal, erstwhile known as Ambedkar memorial.