Mob drives away NMC's anti-encroachment squad

NASHIK: The civic anti-encroachment squad had to beat a hasty retreat for the second time in a week from Nashik road when a mob of hawkers and political workers blocked their demolition drive on Wednesday.
The civic team had planned to demolish the illegal sheds and platforms of few shops at Ingle Nagar but was in for a rude shock when the mob of hawkers and political workers staged a rasta roko for around 20 minutes and brought the drive to a halt.
There were two earthmovers, three tempos and a vehicle with two officials and the 16 police deployed permanently for such drives proved to be insufficient as the mob disrupted the work of the government officials between 12.30 pm-1 pm.
"We began the drive at 11 am and little did we realize that this mob of hawkers and shopkeepers would charge at us with the help of some politically-connected people. We were around 50 and they were more than us in numbers. We had to discontinue the drive and leave the spot immediately," said an official from the squad.
The officials said that the Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC) had issued a public notice in the newspapers urging the owners to remove the encroachments. Almost 80% of the people had removed the encroachments on their own at Jail Road. However, the mob at Nashik Road received support from workers of a political party and have blocked the drive repeatedly.
Deputy municipal commissioner (tax and encroachment) RM Bahiram said that the squad had regular police protection for the demolition drive but had to call additional force after the incident. "We will be filing a complaint with the Upnagar Police station against the miscreants," he said.
Following the incident on Wednesday, the civic administration had temporarily halted the demolition drive. The municipal administration has now asked the police to provide more cover for such demolition drives in the future.
Municipal commissioner Praveen Gedam said, "Those who created obstacles during the removal of encroachments have vested interests. They are misleading the hawkers. We want to assure all the hawkers that we are in the final stage of shortlisting hawkers' zones and are only removing the existing illegal constructions."
He added that they will initiate strictest possible action against those obstructing the demolition work and a police case would be registered in the matter.
On January 22, hawkers, shopkeepers and all-party leaders had protested against the NMC's demolition drive in a huge rally at Nashik Road. The NMC had issued a public notice through newspapers asking encroachers to remove all the extensions and illegal constructions on their own in December 2014.
During the first week of January, the NMC began removing the illegal construction. Following opposition, they began marking the illegal structures a few days later and asked the owners to remove them. On January 14, the municipal commissioner again appealed to the owners to remove all the illegal constructions.
He said that the citizens, landowners and developers should refer to developmental control rules 23 (1) and 23 (2) that came into force in 1993 to check their constructions and should cooperate with the NMC to remove the illegal constructions. All the illegal constructions like shed, platforms etc on government and private land in the city limits should be removed.