Oppn in BMC walks out on proposals being cleared without debate

Leader of the Opposition Kishori Pednekar said the opposition had come prepared to point out deficiencies in the proposals and demand that they be rejected, but was not given an opportunity to be heard

MUMBAI: Opposition corporators walked out of the BMC House on Tuesday, alleging that around 15 improvement committee resolutions were cleared without a debate or addressing the deficiencies raised by them.

Kishori Pednekar (HT PHOTO)

The proposals cleared included several contentious ones. Among these were a plan to hand over the defunct SevenHills Hospital in Marol to Capri Global Ventures Pvt Ltd under a public-private partnership (PPP) model; to lease the 6.17-acre Century Mills land in Lower Parel to Peddar Realty Ltd for 30 years, again under a PPP model; and the Mulund petrol pump proposal, which seeks to convert a roughly 4,000-square-metre civic land parcel in Mulund East, originally designated for a sports complex, into a petrol pump and CNG station.

Leader of the Opposition Kishori Pednekar said the opposition had come prepared to point out deficiencies in the proposals and demand that they be rejected, but was not given an opportunity to be heard.

“If you are going to clear all these proposals without even taking into account what we want to say, what is the point of sitting inside? That is why we walked out,” Pednekar told HT. She alleged that several proposals were technically unfeasible and the opposition was only seeking to get them reworked and resubmitted in accordance with the law. “You cannot bypass the law,” she said, adding that the mayor cleared the proposals within minutes and “did not even look” at the opposition members or hear their concerns.

Pednekar said the opposition raised its concerns in a mock parliament staged outside the civic headquarters and later met additional municipal commissioner (eastern suburbs) Avinash Dhakne. “But when the pressure to clear this alleged loot is coming from the top, who can stop it? They are also held hostage,” she said.

Congress Group Leader Ashraf Azmi said the opposition symbolically “rejected” all the proposals during the mock parliament. “This was done to make sure that everyone knows that the opposition in the BMC was not mum when the looting of public assets was going on,” he said.