Less than a week after the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) evicted 215 illegal slum-dwellers from and around the Tansa water mains near Bandra terminus, the encroachments have resurfaced. 

BMC had undertaken a demolition drive to secure the pipelines, after being criticised by a high court division bench. The court had rapped the BMC for compromising with citizens' safety and health by allowing slums on the pipes, following which municipal commissioner Jairaj Phatak ordered immediate removal of slums constructed after 2000 along pipelines. 

A civic demolition squad kick-started the drive on April 16, and 215 hutments were demolished. When DNA revisited the demolition site on Monday, the hutments were back. 

BMC sources told DNA the site had been left unmanned and unfenced after the demolition. The reappearance means the manpower resources and money spent in demolishing them has gone to waste. 

Suhas Karvande, deputy municipal commissioner, encroachment removal, expressed helplessness. "Till the time we protect and fence sites, once they are cleared, hutments are bound to reappear." He added that a proposal to provide fencing and private security along the water mains was being worked out by the water department. Phatak shared the opinion. He told newspersons recently, "It was important to understand that the hutment dwellers had come to Mumbai to earn a livelihood and wouldn't leave the city even if their hutments were razed." 

Most of the resurfaced shanties belonged to Kashmiri migrants, who reportedly come to Mumbai during winter. While there are 15,789 hutments along pipelines in Mumbai, 6,999 of them are said to have been constructed after 2000.

Sandeep Ashar/ DNA-Daily News & Analysis Source: 3D Syndication