Maharashtra: After razing 4,500 illegal structures, residents agitate as PCMC eyes town planning schemes

Civic officials said the PCMC intends to implement the town planning scheme on 380 hectare land in Chikhali-Kudalwadi and 1,425 hectare land in Charholi

A few months ago, the PCMC had razed around 4,500 illegal structures in Chikhli-Kudalwadi area (Express)

RESIDENTS of Kudalwadi, Chikhali and Charholi have strongly opposed the announcement made by the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation to implement town planning schemes in their area.

Residents reacted strongly to the notification published by the PCMC in newspapers, declaring its intention to implement the town planning schemes in these areas.

Civic officials said the PCMC intends to implement the town planning scheme on 380 hectare land in Chikhali-Kudalwadi and 1,425 hectare land in Charholi. Angry local residents raised slogans and burnt copies of the notification.

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Prasad Gaikwad, Deputy Director, Town Planning, PCMC, said, “We have declared the intention to set up the Town Planning scheme in these areas. And therefore we had declared our intention through the notification.”

A few months ago, the PCMC had razed around 4,500 illegal structures in Chikhli-Kudalwadi area. Now allegations have surfaced that the action was taken to benefit the builders’ lobby.

Denying that PCMC has any such intention, Gaikwad said, “The Town Planning scheme is being implemented to ensure that these areas which had seen illegal structures do not become such a thing again. Town Planning schemes have been implemented by PMRDA and Pune Municipal Corporation. They are the best way to ensure planned development without getting trapped into lengthy land acquisition process. The PCMC will be benefitting by getting 15 per cent development land during this process.”

Gaikwad said the town planning scheme will be handed over to the same which had been alloted the scheme in 2011. ”We intend to hand over the scheme to the same firm which had earlier carried out TP schemes in other places and which had been alloted the work earlier,” he said.
When asked about the opposition to the scheme from villagers, Gaikwad said, “We will try to take local people into confidence. If more than 50 per cent local people oppose the scheme, we will have to then cancel it.”

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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