BMC razes dargah, adjoining structures in Aarey anti-encroachment drive
Officials say shrine was part of a 70,000 sq ft encroachment on government land near forest buffer zone.
Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Tuesday morning demolished a Sufi Islamic shrine or Dargah. (Express Photo) Continuing the anti-encroachment drive against illegal structures, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) along with the state government’s Dairy department on Tuesday morning demolished a Sufi Islamic shrine or Dargah owing to alleged illegal construction. According to the civic officials, the structure stood on a land parcel that belongs to the dairy department of the state government and also falls under the buffer zone of the state forest department.
The government’s move of demolishing this structure comes a week after the civic body and railways razed 500 slums at Bandra East’s Garib Nagar to make way for a railway project.
Located inside unit 32 in Mumbai’s Aarey forest at Goregaon (East), the Shrine has been in place for more than 50 years, locals said. However, on Tuesday morning the authorities razed the structure by using bulldozers and JCB machines. Civic officials said that the complaint against this shrine was launched by the former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Kirit Somaiya.
The civic officials said that alongside the Shrine, 10 other structures were also demolished which were being used as housing tenements by a group of people.
“The state government had issued the occupants notices asking them to vacate the premises since the land is owned by them. Following which we (BMC) also issued notices citing coercive action and sought their documents for verification. During the process it was found that the land was captured illegally and we told them to vacate the premises at the earliest,” an official told the Indian Express.
The civic officials said that the occupants were given time till May 31 for vacating their premises and since they failed to do that the BMC had to raze the entire structure on Tuesday morning. The civic body had deployed two bulldozers and JCB machines for carrying out the operation and the process was carried out under the supervision of heavy police posting.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday Somaiya had issued another letter to Mumbai’s municipal commissioner and police commissioner demanding discontinuation of Namaz offering on the streets and public spaces of Mumbai.
“Such gatherings disrupt traffic and cause inconvenience to commuters, sometimes for nearly an hour. Even on working days, prayers are allegedly conducted at crowded and traffic-sensitive locations. No group should be allowed to obstruct the daily lives of citizens in the name of religion,” Somaiya’s letter stated.
Earlier on May 31, the BMC demolished 150 structures across Mulund’s Amar Nagar and Khindipada to make way for the Goregaon Mulund Link Road (GMLR) project. With a total of 384 structures identified along the project alignment, 234 more residential and commercial structures are slated to raze in the upcoming week.
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