Following Dr Kirit Somaiya’s allegations against chief minister Prithviraj Chavan regarding providing additional 0.5 Floor Space Index (FSI) to the company of K.S. Chamankar, a contractor who built the Maharashtra Sadan in New Delhi, the Congress on Sunday retaliated by accusing the senior BJP leader of misleading people by giving baseless information.
Party spokesperson Sachin Sawant said that Dr Somaiya had started a drive to malign chief ministers of the Congress-ruled states by making unfounded allegations.
“After the decision to increase size of each rehabilitation tenement for slumdwellers from 225 square feet to 269 square feet in 2009, the FSI for slum redevelopment projects were increased from 2.5 to 3 and hence, the same was applicable to this project too,” Mr Sawant said in reply to the allegation made by the BJP leader targeting Mr Chavan on Saturday.
He argued that the chief minister didn’t favour the contractor, but followed the decision taken by the state government earlier. The Congress spokesperson informed that as per the notification, projects involving high-density slums having over 650 tenements per hectare are entitled to an FSI of 4, whereas those with lower tenement density are entitled to 3.
He further added that Dr Somaiya was also making such false allegations against Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot. “It seems that the BJP leader has started a kind of campaign to malign image of chief ministers of the Congress-ruled states. But the Opposition will not succeed in their objective with such dirty tricks, as people are wise enough to decide what is good and bad,” Mr Sawant said.
On Saturday, Dr Somaiya had said that the public works department (PWD) had already permitted the contractor to redevelop the Andheri RTO land from which Mr Chamankar would earn a profit of around `1,000 crore. Despite that, he alleged, the CM went ahead and increased the FSI for the said land from 2.5 to 3 in April this year. With this move, he gave the contractor a profit of another `50 crore.