The Hawa Ghar, IMD Observatory, came into existence sometime during the British regime. Wooden buildings were raised in a sprawling complex of 13,560 sq metres with staff quarters etc. It was working satisfactorily. In the meantime, the India Meteorological Department speeded up the pace of development of the station in Port Blair and made quite a large allocation for buildings, equipments and instruments etc. The work was assigned to CPWD, the central construction agency.

The question of ownership of land came up and it was realized that the entire land was registered in the name of the Andaman PWD. It was also revealed that a portion of it was encroached upon by one of its former employee.

The IMD, Port Blair has been pleading with the administration to transfer the ownership of land to IMD and also to remove the encroachment from its premises. But in the last eight years all that it could get in return is a stoic silence from the administration. DC Gupta, Director-in-charge would not talk about it on the ground that it was an official matter and he would not like to talk about it to the press. He reluctantly admitted though that the installation of Doppler Weather Radar was held up for want of space and the title. The junior subordinates however had no qualms talking about the insensitivity of the administration in dealing with an institution of central government that would have such a profound influence in the lives of the people of the islands.

The Tahsildar, Port Blair does not have a telephone and the Deputy Commissioner, South Andaman district was not available for comments.