Pune July 07 Congress legislator questions civic body's wisdom in use of EWS space Pointing out that affordable housing for the Economically Weaker Section (EWS) of society is as badly needed as slum rehabilitation, Congress MLA Balasaheb Shivarkar has taken on the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC). He has charged the civic administration with using land reserved for EWS housing towards slum rehabilitation projects under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). "The PMC should allow the use of land strictly as per reservations in the Development Plan (DP). If the land reserved for EWS is used for slum rehabilitation, then the entire aim of having the DP gets lost,' Shivarkar told The Indian Express. The MLA said he was planning to raise the issue in the coming Monsoon session of the state legislative Assembly. The DP has made provisions for EWS housing to ensure affordable housing for the poor, he said, adding that the civic administration was undermining this effort by using the reserved land for slum rehabilitation. Under JNNURM, the PMC had proposed the construction of 40,000 dwelling units. The PMC has been able to start the construction work for 6,000 tenements at Hadapsar and 2,576 tenements at Warje but work at Lohegaon (4,480 units), Kothrud (1,680) and Kondhwa (1,792) is yet to commence. When contacted, PMC Estate Officer Suraj Mandhare said that it would have been wrong on the part of PMC if it had decided to use the land reserved for EWS housing for housing complexes for high income classes, but that is not the case as the land is being used for the rehabilitation of the poor. However, Shivarkar is not convinced by this argument and has sought detailed information from the civic administration on the status of all land reserved for EWS housing in the DP, along with the list of beneficiaries. "The slum dwellers will be rehabilitated through housing projects under various schemes while the rich classes can afford their own houses in the city, but where will the EWS go if the land reserved for their use is usurped for slum rehabilitation,' Shivarkar asked. He opined that the civic administration could have identified other land for slum rehabilitation. "If the civic administration is unable to provide affordable housing to the EWS despite land being reserved for the purpose in the DP, then there is no use of maintaining such reservations,' he pointed out. Similarly, the civic administration is allotting apartments in its custody under EWS for rehabilitation of project-affected people, Shivarkar said. "There is a separate reservation of Housing the Dis-Housed (HDH) for the rehabilitation of project affected people. Despite this, the civic administration is rehabilitating them in EWS houses,' he said. The PMC City Improvement Committee (CIC) recently passed a proposal to allow additional floor space index of 2.5 to encourage private builders to build houses of up to 300 sq ft area for the poor.