A day after the Mira Bhayander Municipal Corporation (MBMC) demolished illegal construction from around 15 structures at Haidary Chowk on Mira Road in Thane district, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) demolished 40 more illegal encroachments on Mohammed Ali Road in Mumbai.
The MBMC carried out the demolition on Tuesday (23rd January) at the same place where the Islamists attacked the Hindus on Sunday (21st January) night.
As reported by the Indian Express, BMC authorities stated that all of the constructions demolished on Mohammed Ali Road were illegal encroachments and that they were removed to open up space on the sidewalks.
The demolished structures included existing commercial establishments, shops located on Ibrahim Mohamed Merchant Road, and stalls of hawkers.
While the BMC conducted the drive on Mohammed Ali Road, there were no reports of a similar effort by the civic body in any other ward. At least ten ward offices contacted by The Indian Express reported that no anti-encroachment activity was conducted in their wards. Mumbai has 24 municipal ward offices. A couple of ward offices claimed that they had been working on Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s ‘deep cleaning’ effort, which mostly involves the removal of illegal vendors.
“At present, local drives are being taken up in all municipal wards as part of CM’s ‘deep cleaning’ drive. For this, we are removing small roadside eateries and vendors to ensure the pavements stay clean. This drive has been operational since the first week of December,” BMC official was quoted as saying.
The Congress and the Samajwadi Party, meanwhile, have questioned the bulldozer action against illegal structures. “Use of bulldozers is not the constitutional way to act against unauthorised constructions. A proper legal procedure of hearing and notices being served should be followed. One also wonders why such actions are always targeted at particular communities. It should be stopped,” Congress spokesperson Atul Londhe said.
Samajwadi Party MLA from Bhiwandi, Rais Shaikh said, “The government is doing all this because elections are coming. They single out one particular community and they think that by doing so they would be able to please the other one. But they are mistaken. This would go against them. Maharashtra has been a land of saints.”
Meanwhile, the BMC official stated that no notices were issued to the vendors as they have no permanent addresses. “These stalls are temporary structures and not legal. Therefore, they don’t have a proper recipient address, as a result, we didn’t issue them any notice and took direct action on Wednesday,” the official added.
“Last week we carried out an anti-encroachment drive to identify illegal structures that were blocking pedestrian space. Following this, we took action on Wednesday morning and demolished nearly 40 structures on Ibrahim Merchant Road that were obstructing footpaths,” the official added.