BOMBAY, 15 April 2006 — Making a firm commitment in the state assembly yesterday, Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh brought cheers to the legislators when he promised that all the pedestrian walkways in Bombay would be free of squatters in the coming two or three years time.

“This announcement and promise from me is not a hollow one. The government has already prepared an in-depth plan to tackle it and is all set also to tackle the problems of the migration in the city. All slums that have come up post-2000 will be considered as illegal,” said Deshmukh to the thumping of desks from the treasury benches.

Replying to several hours of debate on unchecked migration and other problems of Bombay, Deshmukh warned the federal government against taking suo moto policy decisions without consulting the state government as this he said would only encourage more slums.

“My government is fully committed to making Bombay a beautiful place to live with complete basic amenities and infrastructure  to meet the demands of the growing commercial city,” Deshmukh said and outlined several measures that the state in consultation with the federal government under the National Urban Renewal Mission (NURM) has undertaken for solving the problems of mass transport, housing and roads.

Legislators from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Shiv Sena (SS) and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) urged the government to take immediate steps to find a solution to the migration problems.

Gurunath Kulkarni of the NCP said that it’s high time politics take a back seat and the government takes a clear stand on making Bombay totally free of slums. Citing that the slums have become a threat to the development of the city, Kulkarni said that there were 3.2 million migrants out of which the biggest number of migrants of 28.5 percent were from Uttar Pradesh.

There were 14.7 percent from Kerala, 8.5 percent from Madhya Pradesh, 7.1 percent from Bihar, 6 percent from Andhra Pradesh and the remaining from different other states.

Shiv Sena’s Madhukar Sarpotdar drew the government’s attention toward growing trends among the new migrating population to turn the flyovers and overbridges into transit camps and pointed out the administration’s failure to rehabilitate the local slum dwellers living for decades in transit camps at the cost of the illegal claimants.

In another development the state government locked horns with the state election commission on the issue of moving a breach of privilege motion in the assembly against the state election commissioner Nand Lal.

Speaking about the motion, Nand Lal accused state chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh of being behind the breach of privilege motion against him and admitting the motion in the House.

The senior bureaucrat came down heavily on Deshmukh stating that said the move to have the motion admitted in the House against him was due to his not succumbing to the pressure exerted on him to retain the status of Latur Lok Sabha (Lower House) constituency as general seat after the delimitation commission proposed that the constituency be reserved for Schedule Caste candidate.

Nandlal’s outburst may bring discomfort for the chief minister as Latur assembly constituency is represented by him. Leveling many other charges against Deshmukh, Nandlal said that the State Government has not been cooperating with the state election commission. The election chief further said that the privilege motion against him was unfortunate as he had not sought to encroach upon the rights of the Legislature but had merely sought to use his own rights. Nandlal also made it clear that as a Constitutional authority he was not a State government employee and thus was not answerable to the Legislature .

The Opposition party legislators in the State Legislative Council, staged a walk out over the spat and war or words between Chief Minister Deshmukh and poll chief Nandlal. BJP leader Nitin Gadkari alleged that the chief minister pressurized Nandlal through Cooperative Minister Patangrao Kadam, Agriculture Minister Balasaheb Thorat and Chief Minister’s principal secretary Umeshchandra Sarangi for making his constituency Latur reserved for the backward class.