Open spaces are prized in a city starved of them. File pic/Atul Kamble

During the meeting, Deputy Municipal Commissioner Kishore Gandhi had said that the RG-PG policy was not going to apply to gardens. He claimed that there was a need to create training facilities for certain sports which would require large investments and technical expertise. But this was not clear in the proposed policy. The activists had submitted written suggestions about the issue to the BMC. Later they also wrote an email to civic chief I S Chahal and demanded that BMC maintain all grounds on its own.

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Gandhi claims BMC is arguing that they don’t have funds to create training facilities for certain sports, but the civic budget is over Rs 50,000 crore and the open spaces will not cost more than about Rs 400 crore. BMC also claims that they cannot maintain and supervise the open spaces. To this, the activists have written, “There may be some truth in this and a candid admission of its capabilities. A very simple solution is to hand over the maintenance to contractors. The audit of these plots could be entrusted to the same institutions interested in ‘adopting’ these spaces. 

In that case, no legal rights are created, nor are they put in the possession of the private party. If an institution wants to really do service and maintain these grounds, it would happily do this if its intentions were not malafide. This could also be done by many NGOs.” It is also pointed out in the letter that about eight years back then Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had ordered that all open spaces given on caretaker or adoption basis be taken back. Despite this BMC has been unable to take back many.