Mumbai, July 29: Just a few months ahead of assembly polls, the Maharashtra government on Wednesday decided to legalise slums in Mumbai built on January 1, 2000 or before.
The state government also announced that the Mumbai slums, the bane of a metropolis that dreams of becoming Shanghai, will be given a permanent status.
Though crucial questions about the pattern of urban development will be raised, the government seems to have made up its mind.
It clearly is a populist move, but one that the Congress had promised long back.
The Congress in its manifesto in 2004 had vowed to regularise slums up to January 1, 2000. But interestingly the party had later called it a printing mistake.
–Agencies