CUTTACK: Once bustling with activity, the 4.5 acre land in Badambadi from where the bus stand had been operating for several decades, is now lying just as marooned with the space remaining unutilised for around two years.
A prominent locality of Cuttack city, Badambadi had earned a special identity across Odisha for its bus stand which had hundreds of buses plying to different corners of the state every day. However, the state government, as part of the city’s decongestion plan, had shut down all the three bus stands operating from the area after setting up the modern Cuttack Netaji Bus Terminal (CNBT) in September 2023.
The Biswanath Pandit Central library which was demolished to pave way for construction of CNBT, is being rebuilt on the Angul bus stand land and a market complex is being planned on the land from where the Puri bus stand once operated. However, no such plan has yet been made to utilise the 4.5 acre land of the main Badambadi bus stand.
Sources said the ownership of the Badambadi bus stand is with the Transport department and the OSRTC, a wing of the Transport department, is in possession of the land. Considering the importance of the place, CDA officials said they had suggested OSRTC to hand them over the said land at Badambadi. “Like Esplanade, a multiplex complex can be set up if the land is handed over to CDA. But the OSRTC is deliberately stalling handover of the area to the authority,” said a CDA official.
OSRTC officials could not be reached for a comment on this matter.