Mumbai: It seems there is no stopping new illegal structures from cropping up in the city despite drives and demolitions of illegal structures conducted by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). The BMC has identified that 10,483 new slums have come up between April 2016 and March 2017.
In fact, the BMC has razed around 326 out of 469 illegal religious structures after the Bombay high court ordered it to do so earlier this month. However, activists said they have been asking for the BMC to chalk out the mess of slums that are eligible for rehabilitation and those that are not.
Activist Raju Korde said, “I feel that a poor man does not encroach but the nexus of police, local administration and politicians creates these structures and then the poor man buys this from them.” Mr Korde said the BMC officer is responsible of monitoring all illegal structures in his area. “Not only the BMC officer but the local police should be held responsible for at least any new hutments that arise in their area, they have done this for selling of hooch and it has worked,” he said.
A BMC official said they are almost 10 years behind where they should be in terms of solving the hawkers issue. He said, “We are struggling to keep up with illegal structures. There are new ones every day and according to the Slum Act, we have to rehabilitate millions.”
Recently, a Right To Information query had revealed no action was taken against actor Amitabh Bachchan and director Raju Hirani despite issuing them notices almost a year ago for alleged illegal structures attached to their properties.
