After a long wait, the state government has finally given its approval to police housing at two spots in Mumbai and an administrative building at Crawford market on Thursday.
After a long wait, the state government has finally given its approval to police housing at two spots in Mumbai and an administrative building at Crawford market on Thursday. This includes 64 staff quarters for police constables at Ghatkopar (east), 108 staff quarters for police constables and 28 staff quarters for police officers at Worli. The approval came after a high-level meeting held between officials from the home department and the municipal corporation.
Police housing was one of the works on the priority list of chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. However, There had been a few hurdles in building them. The issue was repeatedly raised on several occasions and the government was under pressure to have the houses built for the police. Mr Fadnavis had announced that 50,000 houses would be built for the police till 2019.
“Today, we have approved 64 staff quarters for police constables of the Mumbai police at Ghatkopar (east), 108 staff quarters for police constables and 28 staff quarters for officers of the Mumbai police at Worli. An administrative building for the Mumbai police at Crawford market has also been sanctioned in the meeting. It was one of the major issues we were trying to sort out,” an official from the home department said.
The state government has already sanctioned Rs 298.67 crore this year for police housing. The Police Housing Corporation has been given Rs 500 crore, which will be used for the housing. The police personnel can take benefits of an additional floor space index of four given to build more houses.
The chief minister had also said to make available soft loans to the police to buy their own houses.
The state has a separate board for police housing and a Director General of Police (DGP) rank officer is appointed as the chief of the board. However, despite this, the issue was raised several times in the state legislature and housing for police was stuck at the bureaucratic level.
