Maneja families demand houses in Kalyannagar

Vadodara: With the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) looking to ensure that 538 families ousted from Kalyannagar get houses at Kalyannagar itself, other families who had lost homes in the razing drive and were given houses at Maneja have also demanded houses at Kalyannagar.
Around 1,900 dwellings were razed by the VMC at Kalyanagar in 2014. Families ousted from the site were given houses at Maneja, Kishanwadi, Sayajipura and Kalali. The families that were given houses at Sayajipura and Kalali faced objections by locales as most of the residents of Kalyannagar were from the minority community.

As a solution to the issue, the VMC had promised that 538 families not allowed to settle in housing schemes at Sayajipura and Kalali by local residents would be given houses at Kalyannagar itself and Rs 3,000 would be paid as rent to them till the scheme came up. But later the civic body had to take the decision of giving the beneficiaries houses elsewhere as the funds for the Kalyannagar project had exhausted. Unauthorised extra work on the project led to the situation. The contractor stopped work as his payments were not released by the VMC.

The civic body then started insisting that the beneficiaries accept houses at a scheme in Tandalja. With families in no mood to do so, the civic body is looking to ensure that the incomplete work at Kalyannagar is completed and they are given houses at the same site.

Members of around 650 families that were given residences at Maneja held protests on Friday demanding that they should also be given houses at Kalyannagar. The families have argued that they had been objecting to resettlement at Maneja soon after they were sent there.

Apart from poor facilities, the families had in 2015 and even before that sighted issues of livelihood and schooling of children that they were facing. They had also raised the issue of harassment from some local headstrong elements.