WHILE THIS COULD HAPPEN TO OUR CITY AGAIN...

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The Mumbai monsoons are around the corner, and already, government bodies responsible for the city's upkeep are trading blows over whose fault it would be if the metropolis was to drown.
    The first salvo was fired by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) who blamed the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) for what it said was the "incomplete cleaning of nullahs and the Mithi river".
    "MMRDA doesn't do its job properly and since the people know only about the BMC, we have to take all the blame," Mayor Dr Shubha Raul said after visiting the Mogra nulla in Andheri on Wednesday.
    The responsibility of cleaning of nallas and rivers in Mumbai are jointly shared by the MMRDA and the BMC.
    Raul went on to accuse the MMRDA of filling the Andheri nulla with gravel and debris, and said that it "could lead to a disaster this monsoon."
    In her meeting with Andheri residents at the BMC headquarters on Thursday, Raul also told the locals that she would raise the issue with the Chief Minister Ashok Chavan as MMRDA comes under direct control of the state government. Not to take things lying down – especially since the BMC slapped a Rs 7.5 lakh recovery notice on MMRDA for a pipeline burst at Lalbaug on Sunday – MMRDA officials shot back. "The mayor should first ask her officials what happened to the Brihanmumbai Storm Water Drain project (BRIMSTOWAD)," a top MMRDA official said.
    The project, designed to augment the storm water drains' capacity, has failed to gather momentum for various reasons including lack of funds and rehabilitation of project affected persons. "No BMC official has the courage to brief the mayor about how they treated the allimportant BRIMSTOWAD project since 1991. The report clearly says that the carrying capacity of Mumbai's drainage system is not enough. It was the duty of the BMC to complete the project. What did they do for all these years? If we are the ones drowning the city, are they going to save it?" a top MMRDA official asked.
    While the cold war between the BMC and the MMRDA is not new, it's for the first time that MMRDA has decided to hit back. "So far, we did not care, because we looked at these utterings as political statements. But now it's become more than political," the MMRDA official said. But matters became worse after BMC slapped a notice on MMRDA on Monday and threatened to file another following another pipe leak at Lalbaug on Thursday.

Mayor Dr Shubha Raul

MMRDA chief Ratnakar Gaikwad

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