Visakhapatnam: Disputed land is posing a hurdle for the East Point Golf Club (EPGC), which has plans to set up a huge convention centre on an adjacent piece of land measuring 4.5 acres at a cost of Rs 50 crore. Left party leaders and other activists have filed a PIL in the high court against the EPGC’s move to acquire the land citing that it was a water body.
The East Point Golf Club, an 18-hole course and the only one for the public in Andhra, had envisaged the setting up of a convention centre that would provide touring golfers all the amenities they required. “We approached the GVMC around a year ago for allocation of 4.5 acres of land neighbouring the golf course to be used for a convention centre to popularise golf tourism. Nothing has come of it as a PIL cites that the 4.5 acres of land must be kept to hold the infiltration of rainwater,” EGPC secretary G. Vinod Babu said.
Vizag is already a hub of many sports in Andhra Pradesh, including cricket, badminton and football, being equipped with better facilities than most other cities in the state. According to golfers like S.C. Das, Aditya and others, golf could become a great tourist attraction in Vizag as the city had been developing leaps and bounds in various sectors and the EGPC was a top-end, scenic public golf course.
“The city, with its good air connectivity, can become a major golf tourism hub in the near future if the convention centre comes up,” they said. The members of East Point Golf Club are hopeful of the court’s dismissal of the PIL, but Left party leaders say that they planned to continue their protest for the protection of the water bodies as natural resources were more important than tourist attractions.
