Vadodara: The standing committee of the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) on Thursday decided to forward the proposal of rehabilitation of residents of Kalyannagar to the general board. The committee decided to do so as the proposal involved policy matters.
The proposal put before the standing committee states that the beneficiaries will have to bear Rs 4.11lakh for the houses. In all 580 houses are being constructed at the site. The proposal states that the contractor who was handling the work and had conducted the extra work at the insistence of VMC officials has also agreed to resume work if his pending dues were released.
The civic body will also have to arrange for a loan for the beneficiaries. The beneficiaries in February agreed to pay extra amounts to ensure that the houses at Kalyannagar are completed. The VMC was also asked to bear a part of the expenses to which it agreed. Officials, however, said that there was no clarity yet regarding who would give the guarantee for the loans.
VMC had razed over 1,900 dwellings in the Kalyannagar in 2014 and 618 families residing here were given houses in Sayajipura and Kalali schemes. But local residents there objected to this as the affected families from Kalyannagar were mostly from the minority community.
After a long agitation, VMC agreed that those who were not being allowed to settle in housing schemes at Sayajipura and Kalali would be given houses at Kalyannagar itself. Till the houses came up the families were to be paid a rent of Rs 3,000.
But unauthorised extra work was conducted on the Kalyannagar project and the contractor stopped work as his payments were stopped by the VMC due to the extra work. VMC initially insisted that that the beneficiaries accept houses at a scheme in Tandalja, but only around 50 families did so with the remaining 580 insisting on houses in Kalyannagar.
File photo of Kalyannagar housing project