State steps in to protect final resting places

MUMBAI: In a city where space is the ultimate luxury, not even the dead are safe. The living are now hoping the departed might give up prime real estate – their burial grounds and crematoria – to accommodate the needs of a rapidly expanding city.

Stepping in to protect the final resting place of the deceased is the state urban development department (UDD), which has instructed civic bodies across Maharashtra to refrain from changing the reservation of burial grounds and crematoria. It has also instructed them not to regularise encroachments on these plots.

Pointing to the paucity of burial grounds and crematoria, the circular was issued to all municipal commissioners and chief officers of civic bodies in the state last week. Citing the Maharashtra Regional Town Planning Act, 1966, it says only the state cabinet has the right to change the reservation of these plots.

The circular says the government is aware of frequent attempts to change or delete these reservations, but this would deprive citizens of an essential facility. On occasion, the circular adds, such attempts have given rise to a law and order situation.

Such is the paucity of a final resting place that plots have been marked in Mumbai’s Aarey Colony, which is essentially forest land, for burial grounds for Christians and Muslims, and a crematorium for Hindus, for the residents of Goregaon and Marol.

In the eastern suburbs, sources in the UDD said, an educational institution is in the process of shifting a trust-owned Hindu crematorium to another plot as they want to expand their educational campus. The educational institution apparently has the trustees’ approval while local politicians to stepped in to facilitate negotiations.

A decade ago, the reservation of a burial ground at Mandale was deleted for a metro car shed built for Metro line 2B.

Decisions like these have upset residents across Mumbai, who point out that the dead must be treated with dignity, and their last rites must be performed with due respect. To be able to do this, the city needs sufficient crematoria and burial grounds, residents point out.

Retired additional chief secretary, T C Benjamin, who served in the UDD from 2009 to 2012, said, “When I was ACS in the UDD, there was issue over a petrol pump in an upmarket area, where the land use was changed and a petrol pump was converted into apartments. Where real estate was expensive, the land use of public utilities such as petrol pumps was being altered. We put a stop to this.”

Today, the city is knocking at death’s door. “Burial grounds and crematoria are essential public facilities and there is a tendency to change their reservations in prime locations. This will exacerbate the dearth of burial grounds and crematoria. The state government has made the right move,” said Benjamin.