The new recreational ground-playground (RGPG) policy of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is likely to face legal hurdles with the Congress deciding to move the court it.
The new recreational ground-playground (RGPG) policy of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is likely to face legal hurdles with the Congress deciding to move the court it. The civic body’s decision to pass the controversial policy, which allows open spaces in the city to be allotted to private organisations on adoption basis has run into trouble with the Opposition.
Opposition leader Devendra Amberkar from Congress said, “Despite objections raised from several quarters, the ruling Shiv Sena-BJP alliance has passed the RGPG policy, which has been made only for big clubs and multinational companies. We would move the court against it as common people will be deprived of open spaces in the city.”
Congress and NCP corporators staged demonstrations in front of municipal commissioner’s office to protest against the policy. Raising slogans, they demanded that the policy should be scrapped, as it is not in favour of common people. MNS corporators protested in an innovative way by playing a game of cricket outside the civic house. Party group leader Sandeep Deshpande said, “With this, we wanted to show how common people will be deprived of open spaces as they will not have access to them. The civic body has allowed private agencies, which will be allotted open spaces, to charge entry fee for citizens. This is very absurd. The BMC has enough funds to maintain open spaces on its own.”
The BJP, which had supported the policy in the civic house, demanded that the policy be corrected further. “We feel there should be a definite RGPG policy and hence we supported it. But there are several factors such as entry fee, timings which needs to be rectified for the benefit of common people,” said BJP group leader Manoj Kotak.
