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Shabana to lead rally against Bombay demolitions

Actress and Rajya Sabha member Shabana Azmi will lead an massive protest rally against the Maharashtra government's ''senseless'' demolition drive on November 13.

Azmi said several organisations -- including crusader G R Khairnar's Rashtriya Jagruti Manch -- have come together to form a front called the Zopadpatti Bachao Kruti Samiti to oppose the demolition of slums.

Disclosing that she would raise the issue in the Rajya Sabha, Azmi said the Nivara Hakk Suraksha Samiti, of which she is the convenor, has always opposed the anti-people slum redevelopment scheme.

The Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party government was voted to power on Sena chief Bal Thackeray's promise that Bombay's 4 million slumdwellers would be given free houses in five years, she said. But Thackeray recently said he had never promised free houses in five years. "The government's backtracking on the main election promise comes as no surprise to us," she added.

Though the government has acknowledged that its "free" housing scheme has failed to take off, Chief Minister Manohar Joshi has insisted on continuing a vicious demolition drive against the poor slumdwellers. About 35,000 families have already been rendered shelterless, and Joshi has promised to restart the demolitions with renewed vigour after Diwali.

Samiti's P K Das said more than 5,000 huts have been razed in the colonies near the Sanjay Gandhi National Park and Babrekar Nagar in north Bombay at the height of monsoon. Pavement dwellers on P D'Mello road and in Madanpura and Nagpada, who have been on the voters's list since 1985, have also not been spared.

UNI

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