Mumbai: The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) Maharashtra expresses its solidarity with the 5,500 families who were relocated to Mahul, a critically polluted industrial area in southeast Mumbai, in 2017, and are now in a desperate struggle to fight for their very right to live. It also strongly condemns the criminalising of their protest and the undemocratic and repressive measures to silence them, instead of addressing their legitimate concerns.
In the past year-and-a-half, more than 100 residents of Mahul have died due to the appalling conditions of toxic air pollution, water contamination, and unsanitary state of the housing units. On October 28, 2018, hundreds of relocated families in Mahul staged a Jeevan Bachao Andolan—literally a movement to save lives—by camping at a spot in Vidya Vihar, Ghatkopar. This is the same spot from where they had been evicted over a year ago.
Around 5,500 families, comprising 30,000 people from various slums along the Tansa pipeline, were moved to Mahul after a court-ordered demolition in 2017. For Mahul residents, this is a last-ditch effort to safeguard their health and future, after a year-long struggle to get justice from the government and the court of law. While the country was celebrating Diwali festivities, the Mahul residents, faced with the government’s apathy, were constrained to observe a Black Diwali on the 10th day of their protest.
Various state agencies, including the National Green Tribunal, have termed Mahul unfit for human habitation. Surrounded by a vast complex of oil refineries like the BPCL and HPCL, and chemical factories like RCF and Sealord Containers, the air in Mahul is not fit for breathing. A study by the KEM hospital in 2014 found high concentrations of dangerous chemicals like nickel and benzopyrene, which were 7 and 37 times the permissible safety limits. The presence of another toxic chemical, toluene diisocyanate, was found to be 83 microgrammes per cubic metre, or 166 times the permissible limit.