Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has stayed the transfer of 100 MHADA flats here to the Tata Memorial Hospital for providing temporary accommodation to cancer patients undergoing treatment there. State Housing Minister Jitendra Awhad on Wednesday confirmed the decision.
Shiv Sena MLA Ajay Chaudhary told reporters that the decision to stay the transfer order was taken after he complained to the CM about objections to it from local residents. Notably, Awhad had taken the decision to allot 100 flats in buildings of the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) to the hospital.
The keys of the flats were handed over to the hospital authorities in May by NCP president Sharad Pawar, whose party shares power with the Shiv Sena and Congress in the state. Chaudhary, who is an MLA from Sewri in Mumbai, said over 1,000 families living in the vicinity objected to the disturbance created by outsiders arriving there on a temporary basis.
"My repeated pleas to the housing minister to hear the grievances of locals went unheard. So, I had to petition the chief minister, he said. Chaudhary said the MHADA can allot an entire building to the hospital, so that it is easy for the hospital authorities to maintain it. But, the decision to allot flats for temporary accommodation in different buildings where people are already staying was not acceptable to locals, he said.
"We have no objection to tenements in transit camps being given to the hospital. There are MHADA tenements in the Bandra-Kurla Complex. One entire building can be given to the hospital, but not where locals are residing," he said.
Chaudhary also said his wife succumbed to cancer four years ago, and he set up a trust in her name with his own money and is helping the needy cancer patients to get medical treatment. "Nobody should tell me the agony of cancer patients as me and my family have undergone the trauma," he said.
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