Maharashtra passes Bill to change cut-off date

Congress-NCP government finally bites the bullet

The Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) government on Friday amended the Maharashtra Slum Areas (Improvement, Clearance and Redevelopment) Act, 1971, changing the cut-off date for regularising about 400,000 illegal slums in the state from January 1, 1995, to January 1, 2000.

A Bill in this regard was passed by voice vote in the state Assembly. The Bill was presented in the Assembly by Sachin Ahir, state minister for housing and slum rehabilitation.

Of the 400,000 illegal slums, Mumbai alone accounts for 325,000. Earlier, Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan had said his government was committed to making Mumbai slum-free.

He deemed that the Opposition’s claim the Bill was passed keeping the coming general elections in mind, saying the Congress and the NCP had assured this in their manifesto released before the 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha polls.

Earlier, the government had failed to keep its promise owing to legal issues, Chavan said. On the need for the amendment to the Act, the government said it had to take various steps to improve water supply, drainage and sanitary facilities, waste-water disposal, etc, in slums.

After it had included extension of the cut-off date for slum regularisation to January 1 2000 in its manifesto for the 2004 polls, the Congress had dismissed it as a printing mistake.

On Friday, making a dig at the government, Shiv Sena leader Subhash Desai sought to know whether the amendment to the Act, too, was a “printing mistake”.