Awaiting report, says BMC on koliwada issue

In response to allegations that the Development Plan 2034 has missed out marking of several gaothans and koliwadas and entirely ignored adivasipadas, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has said it is awaiting the report of a committee from the revenue department, appointed in May last year. This committee was to delineate the koliwada boundaries and extent of areas as per procedure, according to the BMC.

As per the DP department’s information, “There are 88 gaothans and koliwadas which are marked in the RDDP 2034. Besides this, the list of adivasipadas as received by the Tribal Development Department of the Government of Maharashtra is part of Annexure to the report (DP Appendices — Appendix 4).”

However, this response has given rise to suspicions among experts who believe that civic body’s explanation is yet another way of shirking away from responsibility towards the DP’s ignorance of Mumbai’s traditional settlements.

As per city-based NGO Watchdog Foundation’s assessment, about 40 gaothans’ koliwadas and adivasipadas have gone missing from the DP. Godfrey Pimenta of watchdog Foundation said, “Even though the text of the DP notifies that there are 88 gaothans and koliwadas and adivasipadas in the city, the subsequent maps have marked only 52 gaothans and 22 koliwadas.”

Mr Pimenta said, “As per the Maharashtra government appointed Afzalpurkar Committee report, there are 189 gaothans and 32 koliwadas in Mumbai. If the state government itself has pegged the number of gaothans and koliwadas, why is the civic body not using the figure ” The Afzalpurkar committee was set up back in 2003, to propose modifications in the re-development of gaothan structures. Meanwhile, an official from the DP department said, “We have not missed marking koliwadas. Some of them come within the boundaries of gaothans and hence we have not marked them separately. But if the revenue department is to submit its report, there is not much the BMC can do.”