Develop slums and gunthewari settlements under smart city

Aurangabad, Dec 31:

In all, 53 slums and gunthewari settlements in the city have been excluded from the smart city plan. The Aurangabad municipal corporation should develop these settlements, otherwise, Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) will hold a protest in front of the corporation on January 8 said city vice president Bhagwan Khillare at a press conference here today.

Khillare said citizens of slum settlements of 1984 should be given below poverty line certificate, quality of slums should be improved, corporation''s poverty alleviation cell should be re-started, at least half of unauthorized settlements should be declared as slums and 30 per cent funds should be spent from smart city project on their development. Demand was also made to cancel the decision taken by the corporation to give 7 schools and 5 plots to private institutions on BOT basis. Rahul Gaikwad, Sandeep Jadhav, Raju Jadhav, Yogesh Suryavanshi, Laxmikant Patil, Jyotish Bahot and others were present at the press conference.