Connivance, corruption and chaos: Sorry tale of Akbar Nagar

Home only to a few houses between 1980 and 1990, Lucknow’s Akbar Nagar, situated on the Kukrail riverbed, metamorphosed into a settlement with around 1,200 buildings where over 2,000 families lived by 2023, officials said. Houses that started coming up near Barrage No. 10 had spread up to the Kukrail river in some years.

Not only houses, but also showrooms, factories, vehicle workshops and places of worship eventually transformed the illegal settlement into a thriving community.

Akbar Nargar’s is a story of connivance, corruption and chaos as people who settled here then had the backing of politicians, as stated by some residents.

“There were around 1,200 establishments in Akbar Nagar before any demolition drive was taken up there,” said Lucknow Development Authority (LDA) additional secretary Gyanendra Verma.

‘Settled here with official support’

Locals said they had the support of previous governments, which provided them with basic facilities such as electricity, roads and water, when they moved to Akbar Nagar years ago. “We built our house in 1996, and got an electricity connection in 2002,” said Ravi Kashyap, a resident.

Mohammed Roshan Ali, a cleric, said his family settled in Akbar Nagar around 50 years ago. “At the time, governor Akbar Ali Khan helped us relocate to Akbar Nagar... Some of us (locals) were from other Uttar Pradesh districts, some from different areas of Lucknow.”

“Authorities set up borewells, streetlights, and roads and gave us electricity connection,” said Shabnam as she vacated her home on Tuesday.

“They even issued us all Aadhar and Voter ID cards on our Akbar Nagar addresses... Also, a road was newly laid just a few days before we were served notices,” she added.

According to the present dispensation, Akbar Nagar was built by land mafias which ignored environmental standards under the protection of the previous governments. “The mafia, which had protection during the Samajwadi Party regime, built multi-storey buildings and showrooms between the Kukrail river and a dam from 2012 to 2017. Also, illegal colonies were built with the help of forged documents even as residential and commercial construction is not possible in the area,” the government statement read.

‘Millionaire’ slum-dwellers

The government further blamed the previous regime for giving space to ‘millionaire’ slum-dwellers in Akbar Nagar. “Today, these lands are occupied by millionaires. Scared by the action of the Yogi government, they tried to mislead the court by presenting the wrong documents. The Yogi government exposed their lies in the lower court as well as the Supreme Court,” the statement read. “...These lands are occupied by millionaires, who called themselves slum-dwellers in the court,” the government said, adding the LDA had submitted a list of 73 ‘millionaire’ land encroachers to the court, which, too, did not consider them as slum dwellers.