Despite four reminders having been sent by the urban development department (UDD) to the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), the latter is still to send its report on the merger of the Pune Cantonment civilian areas with the municipal corporation to the UDD. It’s been over a month since the fourth reminder was sent to the PMC administration via email, seeking an urgent reply to the communication along with a detailed report.
Secretary of the UDD, Sushila Pawar, on March 27 had sent a letter marked ‘urgent and important’ to the Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Ahmednagar, Aurangabad and Nagpur municipal corporations, seeking their reports on the merger of the respective cantonment boards in their areas. The corporations have not sent any reply to the state government till date.
A UDD official visited the PMC headquarters on April 12 and spent nearly four hours visiting various PMC departments seeking details on the communications sent to the PMC. Later, PMC officials, realising the urgency of the matter, prepared some draft related to the merger and submitted it before the office of the municipal commissioner for his signature.
When contacted, deputy commissioner (general administration) Sachin Ithape, said, “We have given the opinions of four to five departments on the issue of merger to the PMC commissioner. The opinions of the education, building permission, and construction departments were also sought. The final call will be taken by the PMC commissioner. However, the issue of merger has not been decided yet.”
Out of the seven cantonments to be merged, Aurangabad municipal commissioner Dr Abhijit Chaudhary on April 13 had held a meeting of all senior officials and sent a report to the UDD. The UDD in its urgent communication had demanded details on how the PMC views the merger and how much additional area and population would be added to the existing PMC population.
{{/usCountry}}Out of the seven cantonments to be merged, Aurangabad municipal commissioner Dr Abhijit Chaudhary on April 13 had held a meeting of all senior officials and sent a report to the UDD. The UDD in its urgent communication had demanded details on how the PMC views the merger and how much additional area and population would be added to the existing PMC population.
{{/usCountry}}On July 8, the state urban department had sent a letter to the CEOs of seven cantonments including Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Dehu Road, Deolali, Kamptee, Khadki and Pune. The ministry of defence (MoD) in its letter addressed to the chief secretary of the Maharashtra government had sought the latter’s opinion on the excision proposal of the central government.
The MoD had proposed that the proprietary rights of the Government of India in all properties, assets and liabilities in respect of the excise area shall stand transferred to the state government for free and the proprietary rights of the cantonment area in respect of the area excised shall be transferred to the state municipality free-of-cost subject to the condition that the ownership over the vacant lands shall be retained by the MoD.
Whereas social activist Rajabhau Chavan said, “Despite official communication coming out in the public, both the PMC and PCB are not showing any interest in solving the problems of the cantonment residents who are suffering since 2017 due to complete depletion of development funds after scrapping of the Local Body Tax (LBT). The merger must take place failing which PCB will become an urban slum despite being under the direct control of the military.”