CM calls meet on 27 KDMC villages

June 7: Chief Minister Manohar Joshi has convened a meeting of government officials and ministers from the Thane district at Mantralaya tomorrow to discuss the long-pending issue of deletion of 27 villages from the Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC).

The state government had twice earlier declared elections to the wards under which the 27 villages fall, but the villagers boycotted the polls saying they no longer wanted to be part of the KDMC as they had been deprived of development and civic amenities. The Lok Sabha elections held three months ago had also been boycotted by residents of the 27 villages to register their protest against what they termed the “indifference” of the authorities. The chairman of the Gramin Sangarsha Samiti, Rajaram Salvi, reiterated at the recent Agri Sena convention that the residents of these villages would fight to the finish. During the convention, Deputy Chief Minister and Home Minister Gopinath Munde had also given an assurance that the state government wouldtackle the problem of the 27 villages immediately and ensure that justice is done to the villagers.

A committee appointed by the state government last year to look into the issue, headed by the then Guardian Minister of Thane Ganesh Naik, had reportedly recommended the exclusion of seven of the 27 villages from the corporation limits.

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District collector Srikanth Singh, divisional commissioner Ashok Sinha, and the two ministers from Thane district, the Shiv Sena’s Shabir Shaikh and the BJP’s Jagannath Patil, have been invited for tomorrow’s meeting. Ganesh Naik has also been invited as an MLA, but it is not known if Naik would attend the meeting and come face to face with the Chief Minister, who recently sacked him.

Sources said the report of the Ganesh Naik committee is likely to be discussed at the meeting and a final decision taken.

According to political observers, the Shiv Sena-BJPs combine would have to pay a heavy price in the Assembly elections to be held in two years if it failed to find asolution to the problem of the 27 villages.