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| Police deployed at the slum during the eviction drive. Picture by Ashwinee Pati |
Bhubaneswar, Jan. 11: For the second consecutive day today, a large number of residents of Maa Narayani Slum near the Bachelors’ Barrack in the Unit-VIII area opposed the eviction drive being conducted by the City Management Group (CMG) that included representatives of general administration (GA) department, Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) and city police.
The CMG had yesterday shifted 40 families to a transit house in Chandrasekharpur area. But 54 families were yet to be shifted. However, BMC claimed that some of these families have been shifted even today.
As officials reached the spot today to carry out the drive, the slum-dwellers, organised under the banner of Basti Surakhya Manch, sat in front of the slum shouting slogans against the drive and prevented the authorities from evicting them. The squad had to go back, but it has given the slum-dwellers time to move out till tomorrow.
As tension mounted, huge number of police personnel had to be deployed. But later BMC mayor Anant Narayan Jena and BMC commissioner Vishal Kumar Dev arrived at the spot to convince the people that shifting would be in their interest.
“They were told yesterday to shift to the transit house in Chandrasekharpur. Some of them shifted yesterday and some residents moved to the transit house even today. We hope all of them will finally go to the transit house with their belongings,” said the mayor.
The slum-dwellers have been demanding allotment of the makeshift arrangements for all the residents of the slum.
However, BMC officials said that only 94 families in the area had been issued biometric identity cards and only they are eligible for shifting. This has earned the corporation the ire of others who do not have the cards, as they would be left virtually homeless once their houses in the slum are demolished.
But the BMC officials, undeterred by the slum-dwellers’ agitation, however said that the residents will have to shift from this area, and it would be made completely encroachment-free.
