Slum dwellers in Mumbai will now be eligible for a house

Was the fire last week at the Sara-Sahara and Manish markets the result of an act of sabotage? “A fortnight before the fire, the civic administration had served a notice to traders to demolish the illegal extension in the market building. Due to resistance, an appeal was supposed to be heard on 2 December. Corporators now suspect sabotage. “It can’t be pure coincidence that whenever notices of demolition are served or chances of redevelopment are contemplated, such fires occur. The case needs to be probed in detail,” said another Congress corporator Sheetal Mhatre,” reports DNA. Another case, the one involving the murder of J Dey, gets murkier as well. “Journalist Jigna Vora, the 11th person to be arrested in the murder of senior crime reporter J Dey, did not speak to fugitive gangster Chhota Rajan in the presence of a senior colleague as she had initially claimed. Vora not only misled the police but even her colleague who had been giving her moral support since her name figured in the case, officials said on Monday. That she lied to her senior colleague came to light on Sunday when he met her in the lock-up at police headquarters in Crawford Market,” says The Times of India. [caption id=“attachment_142938” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The state housing department has initiated a proposal to allow dwelling rights to all slumdwellers. “]  [/caption] A lot of you might now wish you had broken the law. “All slum families in Mumbai will be eligible for a house, if a proposal moved by the state housing department is approved by the government. In a move that would make slum cut-off deadlines almost irrelevant, the department has initiated a proposal to allow dwelling rights to all slumdwellers. Slum-dwellers settled prior to January 1, 1995 will be eligible for free houses, while those settled thereafter would be required to bear up to 50% of the construction cost,” says The Times of India. Since you will not get a flat free or even at 50 percent of the value, the good news is that flats will not get more expensive. “Property sales in Mumbai’s overheated realty market have dropped a massive 70 percent from their 2007 peak levels. According to international property consultants Knight Frank’s recent report, the steepest dip has happened over the last three quarters of this year…In what might come as some relief to hopeful home buyers, the report goes on to state that the “market indicators strongly hint at an imminent inflection point”, reports Indian Express. It required a tragic death to make the BMC authorities take notice. “It was only after an eight-year-old lost his life that the municipal corporation has realised the dangers of hoardings placed on the city’s 33,000 lamp posts. The corporation now plans to implement tougher norms for hoardings on lamp posts such as increasing the distance between the road and hoarding and specify what material it should be made of,” says DNA. Another story in DNA tells us that the driver did not even have a valid license! “Investigations into the death of an eight-year-old boy when travelling in his school bus revealed that the driver not only had an expired licence, but it was also not from Maharashtra,” the report said. And what do authoritiers do about this one? “Five students, three boys and two girls, of SIES College at Nerul allegedly ragged a student in the college campus on November 24. A third year science student alleged that he was made to do sit-ups and eat chillies because he brushed past the group. “I was made to eat chillies, do sit-ups and say sorry because I had pushed the group in my hurry to go to the classroom to collect the results of the aptitude test for L&T placement,” said the student,” reports DNA. From chillies to sultry – and almost hot. “Sultry weather revisited Mumbaikars on Monday after a short-lived nip in the air. Temperatures that started soaring from Sunday continued their ascent along with high humidity levels and cloudy skies. There are even indications that the city may experience a spell of rain on Tuesday. Night temperatures that had dipped only about five days ago have started climbing again. On Sunday night, minimum temperature rose 4-6 degrees above normal. While Colaba recorded a minimum temperature of 27 degree Celsius, Santa Cruz’s was 25 degree Celsius, up from 23.4 and 18.8 degree Celsius, respectively , on Thursday,” says The Times of India.