80 acres land at NST sanctioned
SHILLONG: The High Powered Committee of the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly is stipulated to meet shortly to discuss the construction of the new Assembly building at the New Shillong Township.
Speaker of the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly, A.T. Mondal, informed The Shillong Times that the State Government has allocated 80 acres of land for the purpose.
Meghalaya has been without a permanent Assembly building for over 14 years now, ever since the heritage Assembly building at Police Bazar was gutted in a fire on January 9, 2001. Since then the Assembly has been functioning from a temporary premises at Rilbong.
Sanction of the land has cleared the main road block, the speaker said, adding that the committee would sit shortly and discuss the matter following which preparation of the detailed project report and others would be taken up.
“Our effort is to ensure that we have a permanent Assembly building as soon as possible,” Mondal said.
After mulling over several sites in the city for the construction of the Assembly building, the State government had zeroed in on the NST at Mawdiangdiang in order to avoid further congestion in Shillong town.
It was during the Assembly session in 2013 that the State Legislative Assembly had passed a resolution entrusting the High Power Committee (HPC) to expedite the process of construction of the new Assembly building.
Prior to this, the decision of the Government to construct the permanent Assembly building at Tara Ghar ran into rough weather after pressure groups and other organisations protested the purported move.
In 2010, the then Union Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh had written a personal letter to Chief Minister Mukul Sangma asking him to abandon Tara Ghar and shift the venue for the construction of the Assembly elsewhere.
