BMC drops Aarey Milk Colony proposal
The controversial proposal of de-reserving a 5,000 square-metre plot of Aarey Milk Colony and converting it into a residential zone, a portion of which would be reserved for a Muslim cemetery, was withdrawn by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) after it came up in the general body meeting on Thursday.
“We will be re-working on the proposal, but now we are withdrawing it,” said
RA Rajeev, additional municipal commissioner.
The proposal had first come up at the Improvements Committee meeting on
September 2006 after a directive by the Urban Development Department (UDD)
to convert the plot from its current status of No Development Zone (NDZ) to
a residential area with a cemetery.
This proposal had seen opposition from members who said that the directive
sought to convert the prime land into a residential zone under the pretext
of a cemetery.
Moreover, the members had pointed out that the Development Control (DC)
rules permit a crematorium or a cemetery in an NDZ provided no services of
any kind were offered by the BMC, and hence, there was no need to convert
the land into a residential zone for the cemetery.
City activists, local tribals and corporators had accused the government of
having brought in this proposal as a move to open up one of the city’s last
surviving green stretches for development and as a form of land grab.
The proposal was later rejected by the BMC improvements committee and
forwarded to the BMC general body on these grounds.
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