Slum squads return, 71600 down in a day

After a week-long lull, civic squads returned to tearing down illegal shanties. The target: 2,764 huts at Charkop, Kandivali (West).Two part...

After a week-long lull, civic squads returned to tearing down illegal shanties. The target: 2,764 huts at Charkop, Kandivali (West).

Two parts of the Ekta Nagar slum — built post-1995 on collector’s land on either side of a nullah — fell to rubble as bulldozers and a 50-strong civic team worked from mid-afternoon to late evening.

Mumbai’s demolition man, Deputy Municipal Commissioner V.N. Kalam Patil said Monday’s demolition had taken the slum tally to 71,608 shanties.

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Even as 5,000-odd slumdwellers ran around collecting their meagre belongings — tin boxes, brass pots, rusted cupboards, an old crib — policemen and policewomen paced up and down, ensuring trouble-makers stayed away.

After demolishing illegal commercial structures in the past week, the focus returned to suburban shanties. ‘‘Around 7 acres at R-South and P-North wards have been encroached — that’s a market value of Rs 20 crore,’’ Kalam Patil said.

Deputy Collector B. Tadvi added that plans were ready to immediately hire private security guards to make sure demolished shanties do not spiring up here again.

Labourers, watchmen and hawkers — mostly from Alipore and Basti districts in Uttar Pradesh — were aghast. Only on December 2, the BMC hammer had come down on them. Then, they had simply collected their belongings and rebuilt their shanties.

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Contract labourer Abbas Moheriya, sensing trouble this time, said he would return to even bleaker reality back in Basti, where he and his wife worked as daily wage labourers.

But like so many others, Abdullah Ali, a watchman at the nearby MHADA colony, with his two children studying in the nearby Malvani municipal school, said the bridges home were burnt long ago.

‘‘There is nothing to go back to. This is home for us, we’ve been here for 12 years,’’ Ali said.

Meanwhile, protests are growing as more families become homeless and with no visible plan for vacated lands.

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Deputy Chief Minister R.R. Patil admitted to The Indian Express earlier this month that those displaced — 3 million homeless if all post-1995 shanties are razed — will have to ‘‘go back home’’.

But most have instead become a floating population surfacing on pavements or simply on the debris of their homes.

Many experts and activists are now calling for a plan and action against colluding civic officials for allowing encroachments.