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Journalism of Courage
VADODARA, July 13: The State Government has asked the municipal corporations in Gujarat to undertake a survey of slums with a view to improve their civic amenities.
Mayor Bharati Vyas, who attended meetings convened by Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel and Industries Minister Suresh Mehta in Gandhinagar on Monday, told Express Newsline that the idea is to solve problems faced by the slum-dwellers on a long-term basis.
She said that if the slums are provided amenities, one can do away with the problem of unauthorised service connections.
Vyas said although the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) has worked out details about the number of slums in the city, a detailed job of surveying the existing civic amenities in the slums would be given to some agency.
Official sources who attended the meetings said that plans are afoot to regularise slums which do not prove hindrances and are not on the roadlines. Those falling on the roadline, town planning roads, proposed roads and river banks will be removed.
Representatives of the elected and administrative wings of municipal corporations from Vadodara, Surat, Bhavnagar and Jamnagar attended the meeting.
Since the code of conduct has come into force, the State Government might not regularise the constructions immediately but would collect details till the elections, say sources.
There are also possibilities that the slum units would be sold to the slum-dwellers. Later on modalities could be worked out to transfer the government land to the corporations or even give the land to the slum-dwellers on ownership basis, sources added.
In Vadodara there are slums at 367 places, sources said, adding that 146 pockets are on Government land, 67 on municipal corporation land and 124 on private land.
Municipal Commissioner G R Aloria and City Engineer B S Trapasia represented the VMC along with Vyas.
