8 years on, project awarded by Bhujbal-led PWD for rehab of slum dwellers is stuck

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Eleven years on, the slum has still not been redeveloped, although the RTO office was built two years ago and has become functional. Madi Nadal, whose grocery shop once stood on the main Link Road where the slum was located, has been forced to open another shop in a bylane. “The business has suffered. And we did not get permanent homes as promised,” he says.

The construction of a building to rehabilitate these people was halted after Enforcement Directorate started probing Bhujbal’s financial transactions.
Jai Laxmi, who stays on the first floor of the five-storey transit camp, — built of iron grills and thin wooden sheets to separate 100-sqft rooms — says that with a choked open drain behind the camp, health has become a major concern. “Children fall ill during monsoons and there are a lot of mosquitoes. The builder maintains no cleanliness in the toilets,” she said.

Her neighbour, Makhandan Maliga, lived in a two-story hut before the builder promised her a flat behind Apna Bazaar in Andheri and moved her “temporarily” to the transit camp in 2008. “We had our own way of living and were happy. We were forced to shift and now we have nothing. I have no papers to prove I lived in the slum razed eight years ago,” she said.

A banner on the plot, once displaying the name of Chamankar as developer, was removed soon after the scam came to light, say locals.

Uttaman Kaunar prays at nearby Shree Ponmudi Lingeshwar Temple, visited by all south Indian residents of the slum. They were able to prevent its demolition. “Thank God we have the temple at least. I hope my children will be given a new home if not me. It has been eight years,” she says.

The transit camp receives water through tankers every day but the builder has still not provided drinking water facility. “Earlier, we had a BMC water line. Now we have to walk to other buildings to ask for drinking water,” truck driver Ramesh said.

Last year, the affected people approached the Slum Rehabilitation Authority to complain against the builder. “The SRA gave a deadline until March 31 this year to rehabilitate all the people. But we don’t expect anything for a long time,” said Jaipal Kavader, who also lives here.