Over 200 employees of the Mumbai airport living at the Sahar residential complex have been asked to vacate their quarters, which the Airports Authority of India (AAI) wants to demolish to make way for the airport redevelopment project.
The AAI has asked the workers, who are mostly from the lower cadre, to vacate their homes in the 24 buildings of the residential complex by January 23. For, the land occupied by the housing complex has been transferred to the Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL), which is redeveloping the airport.
The Sahar Citizens Forum has opposed the eviction, saying that the employees have been asked to vacate their homes without being provided with an alternative. Worried that the employees may be evicted by adopting summary proceedings under the provisions of Public Premises Eviction Act, Nicholas Almeida of Sahar Citizens Forum, also a former corporator, said, “While the employees are being pushed out despite paying house rent to the AAI, we wonder why no law is being invoked to remove the 80,000-odd slum-dwellers encroaching on the airport land?”
Narayan Samant, one of the employees who got the eviction notice, said, “We are being told that GVK (which operates MIAL) and the aviation ministry have signed an agreement to transfer the land to MIAL. While the buildings are to be demolished for redevelopment sake, the authorities have cited “no budget” as reason for not constructing new quarters for the employees.”
A driver in AAI, Samant now plans to to protest the AAI move. “We’ve been told that since we get a House Rent Allowance, we should find our own accommodation,” he said, adding that the Sahar Citizens Forum was planning to join the AAI employees in a hunger strike from next week.
A MIAL spokesperson said, “The land (residential colony) will be taken up for airport development. This area was supposed to be handed over to us within a year of us taking over the airport development project. It is now five years and AAI has started the procedure to give us the land.”
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