All of you must have been following the news updates about the meetings and rallies upto midnight of thousands of Mumbai’s urban poor over the past few weeks, in the wake of the brutal arrests and forcible demolition of houses at Golibar (Khar), with the involvement of the notorious Shivalik Ventures.
As the families already evicted are still tying to come to terms with the cruel dispossession, we have just got news that a fresh batch of eviction notices has been served to 126 more families in the area and the Shivalik Builders along with the help of the Collector and police squads is all set to attack the Ganesh Kripa Society today, anytime after 10 a.m. Though the Notice is only to evict people and bring out the belongings, but they will surely attempt to illegally demolish people’s houses, as they did last time as well. We are told that more eviction notices to other families are in the offing.
As you now, many of Shivalik’s rehabilitation buildings are on the lands of the Defence Ministry and the Ministry has dragged the Builder to the High Court. Even as this litigation is taken further, the drive for forcible eviction is being pushed, since the prime land would fetch them hundreds of crores of profit.
A brief background note on the Shivalik Ventures is below. Kindly also look into yesterdays Times of India report below on “State 'gifts' 6 builders 500 acres of slum land”, which highlights the issues of concern with the 3-L cluster model of ‘slum development,’ questioned by many including media over past few years. With political connections both at the State and Centre, Shivalik, as it has been doing, will try very trick to break the law and displace people.
Please send immediate faxes and emails to the Chief Minister’s office and residence, calling upon him to issue urgent instructions to the district administration to stop these demolition and evivtion drives and instead institute an inquiy into the fraud and illegalities committed by Shivalik Ventures and take prompt legal action against it.
Contact the Chief Minister, Maharashtra Shri Prithviraj Chavan:
Phones: (Off) 022-22025151, 22025222, Fax: 22029214
(Res)23633051, 23634950, Fax: 23631446
E-mail: chavanprithviraj@sansad.nic.in ; chiefminister@maharashtra.gov.in
Background of Shivalik’s Illegalities:
The case of Shivalik is one of illegally seeking approvals at various levels from Slum Rehabilitation Authority to the Department of Housing, Mantrayala. It is well-established that the lands which Shivalik is claiming to develop were in the case of some co-operative socities allotted to them by the Government for development of their choice. The developers they selected received all approvals, which were later manipulated and in a way, purchased to make a ‘joint venture’ by Shivalik, without consulting and informing the societies. The fraudulent entries in the lists of beneficiaries (Annex -II of SRA’s procedures) are also exposed and an FIR is filed on the basis of the same.
The biggest fraud, however is that the only rehabilitation buildings constructed and accomodation offered to the evictees are on the land belonging to the Ministry of Defence, which is a 62 acres plot as against half-an-acre in the case of Adarsh scam. The Defence Ministry has taken Shivalik to the Mumbai High Court and the case is to be heard further Thousands of residents and members of many co-operative socities are, therefore, questioning this illegality of the Builder, who has also grabbed and used the land of the Customs Department and one near the Railways, against the laws.
The people living in the Trnsit camps are given much smaller accomodation than legally mandated and hence, although they await and hope to be beneficiaries, they too are cheated and many of them, are making common cause with others, who are challenging the Builder on various issues. A handful of persons who are favoured by the builder have always stood agaisnt the majority who are questioning corruption and repression at the hands of the Builder-State-Agent nexus. So is the case here.
कोणत्याही टिप्पण्या नाहीत:
टिप्पणी पोस्ट करा