Mumbai: Around a month ago, a fire broke out in a machinery workshop in Madanpura. Hundreds of bikes parked on the street leading to the shop compounded the crisis till local youths got together and removed the bikes, clearing the way for fire engines.
It partially explains E ward's creaking infrastructure. Old, cessed and dilapidated buildings, choked drains, dysfunctional sewerage systems, garbage dumps and traffic jams bedevil the locality. Home to some of the city's oldest and most congested localities like Madanpura, Agripada, parts of Nagpada, Clare Road and Byculla station, the ward awaits an overhaul or, as local resident and activist Zubair Azmi of NGO Madanpura Vikas Manch, said, "a serious surgery". "The area is a victim of government apathy. Corporators claim to have spent on redevelopment but it is either absent or just patchy," said Azmi.
It is a hotbed of some of Mumbai's former slum lords and gangsters, including gangster-turned-politician Arun Gawli. Ironically, Gawli's daughter and two-time corporator from his Akhil Bhartiya Sena (ABS) Geeta Gawli, blames much of the area's backwardness to her father's incarceration. "Daddy planned a lot of things for this area but the administration kept him in jail depriving residents of their genuine servant," claimed Geeta. ABS has just two corporators, the other being Gawli's brother's wife Vandana. "First it was Gawli, then his daughter and his brother's wife have prevented removal of many encroachments. They protect these slum dwellers because they vote for them en bloc," said a local.
Source:-Timesofindia
It partially explains E ward's creaking infrastructure. Old, cessed and dilapidated buildings, choked drains, dysfunctional sewerage systems, garbage dumps and traffic jams bedevil the locality. Home to some of the city's oldest and most congested localities like Madanpura, Agripada, parts of Nagpada, Clare Road and Byculla station, the ward awaits an overhaul or, as local resident and activist Zubair Azmi of NGO Madanpura Vikas Manch, said, "a serious surgery". "The area is a victim of government apathy. Corporators claim to have spent on redevelopment but it is either absent or just patchy," said Azmi.
It is a hotbed of some of Mumbai's former slum lords and gangsters, including gangster-turned-politician Arun Gawli. Ironically, Gawli's daughter and two-time corporator from his Akhil Bhartiya Sena (ABS) Geeta Gawli, blames much of the area's backwardness to her father's incarceration. "Daddy planned a lot of things for this area but the administration kept him in jail depriving residents of their genuine servant," claimed Geeta. ABS has just two corporators, the other being Gawli's brother's wife Vandana. "First it was Gawli, then his daughter and his brother's wife have prevented removal of many encroachments. They protect these slum dwellers because they vote for them en bloc," said a local.
Source:-Timesofindia