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Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray hit out at Union Minister Piyush Goyal and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday for proposing to shift slums to salt pan lands during an election event in Mumbai.
"In an interview with a major newspaper, Union Minister Piyush Goyal mentioned that he wants to make Mumbai slum-free and the way he wants to make Mumbai slum-free is by shifting or forcefully shifting all of this slums to salt pan lands of Mumbai," Aaditya Thackeray said while speaking to reporters in Mumbai on Saturday. "Today he wants to force, slum dwellers from all across Mumbai to go to salt pan lands. This is unjust, this is dictatorship. A lot of slum dwellers come here to work day and night. They have local jobs, local businesses, local employment," he added. Highlighting the rehabilition works by Mumbai's Slum Rehabilitation Authority, Thackeray said, "You cannot forcefully shift anyone in this country. The most important thing being they have to be heard, they have a voice. A lot of slum rehabilitation processes are going across in Mumbai and across the country. But largely in Maharashtra, the SRA (Slum Rehabilitation Authority) in Mumbai is actively working on giving them homes that they really deserve." "The most important part is that Goyal believes that they should all be forced out and sent to salt pan lands. The problem here is that salt pan lands today are environmentally sensitive. Until now they have been no development zones," he said. The Shiv Sena (UBT) leader criticised the ruling BJP government for earlier disapproving the proposal to shift the Metro-3 carshed to Kanjurmarg. Calling the party 'anti-Maharashtra', Thackeray alleged that they want to stop the state's progress. "Giving a false reason of a salt pan land, his ministry have blocked our proposal to move Metro car shed from Aarey to Kanjurmarg. There is no salt pan there. And yet he wanted to move it from that particular land claiming its salt pan back to Aarey. Now Mumbai and Maharashtra would have saved Rs 10,000 crore had we moved our carshed to that consumer land. Four metro carsheds would have come in one place. Yet the ego of the BJP came in the way. Believing that Maharashtra is making progress, they wanted to stop our progress. They are anti-Maharashtra. They brought it back to Aarey," he said. "And same is the case with Dharavi, they want to force them out of Dharavi to go to salt pan lands for the next 16 or 17 years. This is what we are against, this is what we want to stop. All of us want development. All of us want sustainable development. And all of us want dignity to life without being forced by dictator to move away. This is a core issue for a lot of Mumbaikars and I believe Mumbaikars will lot on this issue," he said. Earlier speaking at an election event, Piyush Goyal, who is BJP's candidate from Mumbai North said that if elected, his government would pursue a project to make Mumbai 'slum-free'. Reportedly, Goyal's constituency, Mumbai North has two major slum areas, namely Ganpat Patil Nagar in Dahisar and Ambujwadi in Malad West. "Who likes to live in slums, nobody chooses to live in slums, they are forced to do it. So we as governing bodies should help give them a life of dignity," Goyal said during the event. He suggested that salt pan lands be put to that use, wherever salt is not being made. Meanwhile, the Dharavi Redevelopment Project works have been underway in the state with the beginning of the survey in Kamla Raman Nagar earlier this month. The survey data will be used by the state government to determine rehabilitation eligibility criteria under the proposed redevelopment project. Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRPPL), a joint venture between the Adani Group and the Government of Maharashtra, announced that eligible residential tenements in Dharavi will get flats with independent kitchens and toilets measuring a minimum 350 square feet (sq ft), which is a whopping 17 per cent more and the highest among slum redevelopment projects in Mumbai. Earlier, dwellers of informal settlements in Maharashtra were given houses measuring 269 sq ft. Since 2018, the state government has started giving them homes measuring between 315 sq ft and 322 sq ft, in line with the minimum area mandated under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana for houses for the urban poor. (ANI)
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