If an elected minister is sitting in the BMC headquarters to solve the issues of Mumbaikars, no one should make a controversy regarding it, Mumbai suburban guardian minister Mangalprabhat Lodha – at the centre of opposition fire — told News18 on Friday.
In an exclusive interview, Lodha said: “When people’s representatives are not there in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), someone has to be there to do their work. The communication between people and elected representatives should keep happening. When I used to roam in the suburban part of the city, many government officers and common people told me that there was gap in communication as there is no BMC house in the place, hence I decided to bridge that gap and started sitting in the BMC as guardian minister. Many civic issues related to people I try to solve by sitting there,” said Lodha.
Without taking the name of Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, Lodha took a dig at them by holding them responsible for the crumbling infrastructure of the city.
“In the last 20-25 years, all know what has happened in Mumbai under the pretext of development. Gutters overflow during rainy season, there is no space for people to walk on roads, waterlogging happens at many places during heavy downpour, people of Mumbai are facing water contamination in many wards, several street lights don’t function properly, many BMC-run schools are on the verge of shutting down as there are no students and teachers. We want to change this situation and we are confident that we will get support of people for such work,” Lodha added.
He also said: “We had planned proper metro rail web for suburban Mumbai that faces traffic issues. We are also trying to vacate open spaces that have been illegally encroached upon. We are also concretising the roads in slum areas and trying to cover the open drains. Widening of road projects is also underway.”
Lodha also backed the civic officials on the issue of potholes, saying for the first time, there are very few complaints of potholes in the city.
“We should change our mindset of looking at civic officials. We should not criticise them every time. This time, BMC didn’t have to refill the same potholes. BMC had taken a great initiative of repairing the potholes of all roads in the city despite them being managed by different authorities. In each ward, we will have one repair vehicle and within the next few days, we will issue the number of that vehicle so that people from that ward can call the number and within 48 hours, the potholes will get repaired. Let me tell you no other government has done this before. The number 1916 that we have activated for people will help address their complaints,” said Lodha.
Lodha also gave credit to BMC officials and praised the hard work of Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and deputy chief ministers Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar. The pre-monsoon work done by the BMC and watch kept by the government resulted in less flooding this time, he added.
“Our aim is to fix the issue of overflowing of drains during monsoon and how Mumbai should not face flooding. We have started working on the plan and within the next two years, all issue will be fixed.”
On the issue of crumbling infrastructure of Mumbai, Lodha said they would not give false hopes to Mumbaikars that all issues would get resolved quickly. “It will take some time to resolve issues as problems of the past 50-60 years can’t get resolved overnight. However, if an honest government is in place, it becomes easy for officials to work and resolve issues.”
The minister also expressed confidence that BJP will win with flying colours in the upcoming BMC election as party leaders are in constant touch with people.
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