Days after the urban development department requested an impact report from the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) regarding the inclusion of 23 areas, originally towns surrounding Pune, in the Pune city limits, the state government finally gave its go-ahead to the merger.
Once these areas, which are newly emerged hot spots for real estate due to low land prices, are part of the Pune Municipal Corporation boundaries, the city boundary will increase substantially from 331 square km to 485 square km.
Urban Development Minister Eknath Shinde signed an order on Tuesday, paving the way for the merger.
The chairman of the city unit of the Nationalist Congress Party and MLA Chetan Tupe, confirming the development, said that with the order in force, the merger of these areas will soon begin within the limits of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) .
“Minister Eknath Shinde has signed the proposal to merge 23 villages into the PMC. Pune District Chief Deputy Minister and Guardian Minister Ajit Pawar has been aggressive in merging these villages on the PMC boundaries. As the minister has given the go-ahead, the Department of Urban Development will make a public resolution completing the administrative process soon, ”said Tupe, who also heads the city unit of the NCP.
These 34 areas were scheduled to merge into the city in 2014, although political controversy stopped their inclusion. In 2017, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led the government in the state and eventually facilitated the merger of only 11 villages on the PMC boundary and promised to merge the other 23 villages in stages.
The merger movement becomes important to the NCP and Congress as these two parties have political control over these areas, which will help them during the 2022 civic elections. As the municipal elections are scheduled for early 2022, Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) has accelerated the merger of these villages into PMC before the elections.
A senior PMC official said that merging these areas into PMC is good. “It would help start the proper development of these towns. Although they are part of the Pune Metropolitan Region Development Authority (PMRDA), they did not have enough machinery to carry out the development process, ”said the official requesting anonymity.
This official said that while making the decision on the merger, the state government must provide funds to the PMC to build basic infrastructure such as roads, water lines, drainage and electricity.
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