Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh has said the issue of reconstruction of the BDD chawls located at Worli would be sorted out decisively after discussions with MPs and MLAs at a meeting to be convened shortly.
The buildings, constructed by the Bombay Development Department were showing signs of a steady dilapidation over the last few years and the issue has been hanging fire since 1995.
Deshmukh gave the assurance during a meeting with Union minister for heavy industries Manohar Joshi at Mantralaya on Friday. They also discussed issues such as the rehabilitation of hutments along the railway tracks, the problems of hutment dwellers in the Sion region whose residences were located below the high tension power lines of Tata Power Company (TPC) and the redevelopment of Antop Hill area in the Dharavi-like pattern.
More From This Section
These areas come within the jurisdiction of Dadar Lok Sabha constituency which Joshi is representing.
At the meeting Joshi suggested the reconstruction of BDD chawls through an agency like MHADA would be preferable. He opined that redevelpoment of Antop Hill area can be done by granting additional FSI as it was done in case of the Dharavi project.
Deshmukh said the state government was seized of the inhuman living condition of the inhabitants housed in some 4,000 hutments over which the high tension power lines of TPC near Sion pass, where the hutments and the godowns had caught fire in the past.
He directed the officials concerned to sort out the matter by holding talks with the commissioner MMC and the officials of TPC.
The chief minister warned that should the deliberations not fructify then the state would take a serious view on it. The meeting was also attended by Nawab Malik, state minister for housing, Vishakha Raut and Suresh Gambhir, both MLAs; Baburao Mane, former MLA and K Shrivastav, commissioner MMC and officials of the government and TPC.