With redevelopment stuck, residents to boycott polls

Residents of 22 housing societies in suburban Chembur here have decided to boycott October 21 Maharashtra elections, to air their grievance about a builder not completing redevelopment of their buildings for years.

The Subhash Nagar Co-Operative Housing Union decided in its Annual General Body meeting recently that 465 families from these societies will not cast votes.

Several pleas made to Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA), which supervises such redevelopment, and the state government fell on deaf ears, said union's secretary Ashwini Kumar Mishra on Saturday.

The builder had agreed to redevelop these buildings, which are over 35 years old, in 2003 and accordingly six buildings were redeveloped, it said.

But after the construction firm's head died in 2008, the work has made little progress, he said.

The builder, who initially paid them rent so that they could live elsewhere till the redevelopment was complete, stopped paying later, forcing the residents to move back to their rickety buildings, Mishra said.

They have written to leaders of all political parties about their decision to boycott the polls, he said.