Mumbai: Over two months after municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta ordered his officials to demolish all illegal slum structures breaching 14 feet, 3,000 residential and commercial structures still stand tall. While Mr Mehta has reiterated that action will be taken against all structures, he has stressed that the issue has a human angle that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) cannot ignore.
However, Mr Mehta said, “All illegal structures beyond 14 feet must go. There are no exceptions and no relaxations of rules. Not only is illegality a problem, but safety of the inhabitants is an issue as well. Two incidents in the recent past took many lives, and even children died in them. One was a fire and another a building collapse, and both structures were taller than 14 feet. So BMC will take action.”
At a monthly review meeting with all BMC officials in October, Mr Mehta directed them to pull down all slum structures taller than 14 feet. However, with the civic elections just round the corner, it is proving hard for the civic body to start demolishing the structures. Every political party has associated itself with the issue, including the Congress, Samajwadi Party, AIMIM and even BMC’s ruling party, the Shiv Sena.
Shiv Sena’s corporator and leader of the BMC in the house Trushna Vishwasroa said, “There is a rise in population and a space crunch , due to which people are forced to construct taller structures. We need to protect them on humanitarian grounds.”
Similarly, Waris Pathan, MLA from AIMIM, said, “I cannot oppose anything that fits in the law. But we must consider that people live in these houses. Can we make better provisions for them, while we demolish their existing houses?”
Mr Mehta said, “We have to understand that there is a human angle to this issue. People live in these houses, and we cannot simply go raze them to the ground overnight. While demolishing them will take time, our first priority is that no new structures can come up.”
