The BMC’s development plan (DP) department had allotted 10,000 sq m of land to the removal of encroachment (R&E) department in April for keeping these vehicles. However, the civic officials didn't find the plot to be feasible. The BMC’s plan to set up a centralised scrapyard for old and unclaimed vehicles, colloquially termed as “khatara”, seems to have gone into the cold storage, with the civic body unable to finalise a land parcel for the same.
Former Mumbai Police commissioner, Sanjay Pandey, had announced “Remove Khatara” drive in February with much pomp and fervour to declutter roads. The BMC and the Mumbai Police were to take action against unclaimed abandoned vehicles that mainly lie on the roadside and eat up the road space.
Following the drive, the BMC had issued notices to the owners of 2,381 vehicles, asking them to remove their vehicles from the roads. Among them, while 379 owners had removed their vehicles, 782 vehicles were seized.
The BMC wanted to create a centralised scrapyard from where such seized vehicles would be auctioned. It planned to appoint a private firm to set up machinery for dismantling and auctioning these vehicles.
The BMC’s development plan (DP) department had allotted 10,000 sq m of land to the removal of encroachment (R&E) department in April for keeping these vehicles. However, the civic officials didn’t find the plot to be feasible.
“The land parcel that was allocated to us is situated on a hill top and there is no driveway to reach the top. Therefore, we could neither take the abandoned vehicles nor set up machinery over there. We had written to the DP department to allocate us an alternate land,” said Sanjog Kabre, Deputy Municipal Commissioner (Projects).
He added that while it has been almost six months now since his office sought an alternate plot, the DP department is yet to respond.
A senior official from the DP department said the BMC is looking towards allotting a land parcel for this purpose soon. “The major issue is that most of the large parcels in Mumbai are either reserved or been allotted for PAP (project affected persons) or infrastructure projects. Allotting a smaller plot will not serve the purpose. We are exploring options and may take a final call by the end of this year,” said the official.
Meanwhile, BMC officials said that with no centralised scrapyard, some ward offices have tried to auction seized vehicles at the local level.