Demolition at Patlipada hills goes slow despite HC order

Thane: On April 7, the Bombay High Court had directed the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) and collector to demolish over 400 illegal hutments on Patlipada hills in three months. But with barely a month left for the deadline to expire, the authorities are still nowhere close to implementing the court’s order.
“As per the court’s direction, we had formed a joint committee of deputy municipal commissioner and deputy collector and started the process of demolishing the illegal hutments.We had issued notices twice asking the slum dwellers to evict, but they refused to accept the notices. As it would have given rise to a law and order situation, we issued a public notice asking the slum dwellers to evict,” said Aseem Gupta, TMC commissioner.
Now, making a mockery of development plans in Thane city, politicians across party lines are lobbing the state government to protect their vote bank by rehabilitating the illegal slum dwellers. Though the TMC or the collector are yet to undertake a survey, government officials believe a majority of the over 20,000 slum dwellers do not fulfill the criteria of January 1, 1995, to be entitled for a free housing.
Slum dwellers from Patlipada hills had recently organized a morcha. Now, they have also moved the HC offering to redevelop the colony themselves, or join any rehabilitation scheme proposed by the government. The HC is going to hear their plea on June 30.
So it comes as no surprise that officials are going slow with the eviction drive. The authorities, however, deny this.
The authorities, with the help of the police, have started construction of a boundary wall to protect the eight to nine acres of green zone from encroachment.
“We removed some hutments. Our efforts to construct this wall were always thwarted by slum dwellers. The reason being one has to pass through the slum colony to reach this vacant land close to Hiranandani Estate,” said Gupta.
Though the wall offers a temporary protection to encroachment, TMC has begun the process of planting nearly 5,000 to 6,000 trees on the vacant land demarcated on the development plan as a green zone.