Bhayandar: More than 16 years after being displaced from their legitimate houses, 105 slum-dwelling families from Bhayandar finally heaved a sigh of relief on Friday, albeit temporarily.
After much administrative dillydallying by the Mira Bhayandar Municipal Corporation (MBMC) and an agonising 16-year-long wait, the 105 of the 140 project-affected families became the beneficiaries of transit tenements built by the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA) under the rental housing scheme.
MBMC Mayor Dimple Mehta handed over the keys of transit flats to the beneficiaries in the presence corporators Rohidas Patil, Shanu Gohil and Madan Singh. The civic administration assured the beneficiaries of permanent accommodation in Uttan under the Prime Minister Awas Yojna.
In existence since 1975, the families were forcefully evicted in 2002 from Bunderwadi in Bhayandar (East) by the civic administration to pave way for the construction of the railway staff quarters.
Thanks to the intervention of Ram Naik, the then railway minister, the homeless families were allowed to relocate to a plot in Navghar village.
Devoid of basic amentites like toilets, roads, electricity and water, the poor families were in for a rude shock when they learnt the civic administration had again planned to evict them on the virtue of resolution passed by the general body house to construct a crematorium on the same land without a strategy to rehabilitate their slum cluster.
This despite the fact the dwellers have documents, like voters’ ID and ration cards validating their pre-1990 domicile in the region. The slum dwellers had also filed a plea seeking justice from the high court.