Gujarat rolls out rehab plan for Sabarmati facelift

The Usmanpura colony will be ready in ‘‘six to eight months’’, said Ahmedabad’s municipal commissioner Anil Mukim, who is overseeing the project. Each house will cost Rs 1.37 lakh, but the evictees will only have to pay a token sum. The rest will be borne through subsidies. Tenders for constructing the colony have already been invited. The 20.5 sq m houses will come up along a 40-foot road, not far from where the evictees used to live. This is the first low-cost housing scheme undertaken by SRFDL.

On completion the project will displace some 10,000 families living in shanties on the riverbed, and they will are to be given new houses in the Dudeshwar, Gaekwad Haveli, and Paldi areas. Colonies will be built for them as work is undertaken where they now live.

The colonies are to be built in blocks so that communities living together for decades are not separated, he said. The sites were chosen as close as possible to where the oustees lived.

Even so, the new colonies will transform the lives of the oustees, say SRFDL officials. Amenities like roads, sewerage, electricity, running water are already available at these three sites. And embankments will protect them from flooding, which used to be a regular problem when the oustees lived on the riverbed slums.