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Ahmedabad: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday inaugurated the newly constructed residential quarters for Gujarat's MLAs in the capital Gandhinagar, and laid the foundation stone for a road project in Sanand taluka of Ahmedabad district.Shah, who represents the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat, reached the state capital on the third day of his Gujarat visit amid the Diwali festivities to inaugurate the residential apartments for the MLAs in Sector 17.The complex with 216 apartments in 12 towers has been built at an estimated Rs 325 crore. Each flat has three bedrooms and is spread over 238.45 square metres (about 2,500 sqft), said a government release.The colony has a large garden, multipurpose hall, community hall, swimming pool, gymnasium, canteen, indoor sports equipment, a dispensary and a provision store, it said.The Gujarat assembly has 182 MLAs. In 1971, one-BHK apartments were built in Sector 17 of the state capital for the MLAs. As the need for more housing arose over time, 168 apartments with two bedrooms were constructed in 14 blocks in Sector 21 in 1990-91. Sitting MLAs are still living in this facility.In 2022, the state government approved the construction of three-bedroom apartments by demolishing the quarters built in 1971, said the release.Earlier in the day, Shah laid the foundation stone of a project to construct six lanes on the Shantipura-Khoraj GIDC section of the Ahmedabad-Maliya road in Sanand taluka, which is a part of the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency but is administratively in the Ahmedabad district.Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel was also present on this occasion, said the release. With an average daily traffic of nearly 43,000 vehicles, there was an urgent need to convert the existing four-lane road into six lanes to reduce accidents and traffic congestion, it said.To be implemented at an estimated Rs 805 crore, a total of 28.8 km of the road will be converted into six lanes. Once completed, the project will facilitate long-distance traffic going towards Surendranagar, Shankheshwar, Radhanpur and Patan in addition to industrial centres like Sanand and Viramgam, it added.
