MUMBAI: With the state assembly election round the corner, vote bank politics has begun. In a bid to woo slum dwellers-that forms a sizeable population of the city voters, Congress MP Sanjay Nirupam has said he has no objection even if post-2000 slums are regularised. Nirupam said this on Sunday while addressing a gathering in his North Mumbai parliamentary constituency in the western suburbs.

"It is wrong to assume that slums add to the burden on the state infrastructure,'' he said in a reply to a query on the state's decision to regularise the slums constructed prior to January 1, 2000.

Nirupam's statement has invited flak not only from the NGOs, the Opposition (Shiv Sena-BJP combine), but also from the Congress' ally, the NCP. Senior NCP leader from the city, Sachin Ahir, said, "January 1, 2000 should be the final cut-off date for regularising the slums in the city. No slum constructed in the city thereafter should be regularised or protected by the state government or the civic administration.''

In the state cabinet meeting presided over by the chief minister Ashok Chavan a month ago, the proposal to regularise slums constructed before January 1, 2000, was cleared by the government. The Congress, when it came to power in 1999, had filed an affidavit in court that it will not extend the 1995 cut-off date. Later, in its election manifesto of 2004, the Congress promised to regularise the slums till January 1, 2000, and filed a fresh affidavit in Bombay high court seeking extension of the cut-off deadline till 2000. But with the court unwilling to extend the deadline, the state government has moved the Supreme Court. "We have filed a special petition seeking permission to extend the cut-off date,'' said Chavan during a press conference on August 29.

"This is a clear case of vote bank politics,'' said Vidya Vaidya, social activist fighting against the encroachment on public space. The government should first induce proper system to rehabilitate the existing slums rather than extending the deadlines to regularise the slums in the city, she added.

Significantly, the state's economic survey this year has mentioned that the slums and migrants are adding to the burden on the state infrastructure.

MNS chief Raj Thackeray has blamed the Shiv Sena for the mushrooming of illegal slums in the city. At a public function in Vile Parle last week, Thackeray alleged that the Sena has failed to curb the menace of slums in Mumbai. Nirupam, too, echoed Raj's views. "People living in slums should not be blamed. Constructing slums and selling them to poor people has become a business. Civic and police officials are to be blamed for this,'' he added.

Refuting these allegations, Sena spokesperson Sanjay Raut said, "The Congress is ignoring the security threat to the city and, for its personal gain, the government is extending the cut-off dates to regularise slums in Mumbai.''

MUMBAI: One in two persons resides in a slum in India's financial capital, according to a report. "Worldwide, one in three persons lives in a slum.

But the figures are much higher for Mumbai where 54.1% of the population are slum dwellers as per 2001 Census.

This means that one in two persons in Mumbai city is residing in a slum," the Human Development Report compiled by Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and UNDP says. "They occupy just six per cent of all land in Mumbai explaining the horrific levels of congestion," it added.

Delhi has 18.9%, Kolkata 11.72% and Chennai 25.60% in slums. Some 29%, between a fourth and third of Maharashtra's urban population resides in Mumbai's slums. The first cut-off date was 1976, meaning the slums settled prior to 1975 were recognised and notified. The present cut-off date for notification of slums is 1995 but the government recently declared that pre-2000 slums would be regularised.

In 2006-07, the city had a per capita income of Rs 65,361, twice than the country's average per capita income of Rs 29,382. Despite having the highest per capita income in the country, the income of nearly 10% population of the city is not above Rs 591.75 per month, which means Rs 20 a day.

These families do not have amenities like TV, fridge, fan, toilets in their house, source of water supply, do not own any vehicle or farm. Quoting a report on Urban Poverty Reduction Strategy by the Regional Centre for Urban and Environmental Studies, All India Institute of Local Self-Government, UNDP said, in 1998 poverty was much low at only 8.5%.

A baseline survey of 16,000 slum households by the MMRDA for its Mumbai Urban Transport Project says, with an average monthly household income of Rs 2,978, and 40% of them were below the poverty line. The UNDP report says, the poor in Mumbai are residing across three distinct habitat categories. The first of these is the chawls - either single or multistoreyed, single-room tenements and pavement dwellers.

The poor who live there include migrants, construction workers, street vendors, domestic help, beggars, waste pickers, sex workers, taxi and auto rickshaw drivers and workers. As per the report, the slum and hutment dwellers of unauthorised structures form an integral part of this vibrant metropolis.

Most of the slum dwellers participate in the "informal economy" which by all accounts would appear to be growing, the report said. "No country in the industrial age has ever achieved significant economic growth without urbanisation. If migration and urbanisation are two sides of a coin, slums are the natural outcomes of urbanisation. Not all poor people live in slums, and not all people who live in areas defined as slums are poor," the report said.

Urban poverty is not seen as only income poverty but absence of access to basic civic services as well and the quality of their habitats. “However, for the sake of simplicity, the urban poor can be termed the slum dwellers,” it said.

Poor qualities of shelter, extreme overcrowding, poor access to public services, including basic civic facilities as well as insecurity of land tenure in most cases are the other markers of poverty, the report said, adding, "there has been no change in the condition of the slum dwellers even though the non-slum areas in the city have improved their lifestyles."

"Therefore, a slum-dweller deserves not patchy, incidental, but focused attention, probably positive treatment or positive discrimination - to bring them into the mainstream of the city to which they contribute," the report said.