New Delhi: The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has served eviction notices to residents of a slum near Motera stadium, which has been recently constructed and will host US President Donald Trump on February 24 in Ahmedabad.
According to a report in the Indian Express, 45 families consisting of around 200 slum-dwellers, who are registered as construction workers, claimed that they have been asked to evacuate the plot of land they had been occupying for two decades. However, AMC officials claimed that the eviction notices were unrelated to the upcoming Trump visit.
The eviction notices were allegedly served a few days after it came to light that the AMC was constructing a wall to hide a slum cluster from the view of the US president on a route that Trump is expected to take while visiting the city.
The families that have been served notices by the AMC live about 1.5 kilometres away from the Motera stadium on the road that connects the stadium to the Visat-Gandhinagar highway.
Construction workers living at the site said that they had been asked to vacate the land as soon as possible. “They told us that the head of the United States is visiting Motera stadium and they wanted us to move out,” said a 35-year-old construction worker who claimed to have been living at the site for the past 22 years.
“All of us are construction workers, registered with Majur Adhikar Manch and on an average we earn Rs 300 daily,” he added.
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However, the AMC officials told the Indian Express that the slum-dwellers had been served notices and asked to vacate within seven days because they encroached upon the land that was to be used for one of the town planning schemes.
“It has nothing to do with US President’s event at Motera stadium. There are some elements who are trying to take advantage of the event,” Kishore Varna, the AMC official who signed the eviction notices, said. However Varna did confirm that the site was on one of the possible routes to the Motera stadium which is expected to host the ‘Namaste Trump’ event for the US president.
An official affiliated to a trade union working for unorganised workers in Gujarat said that most of the families who had been served eviction notices were registered as construction workers with the union. “What surprises us is the speed at which the AMC is working to evict them,” said Mina Jadhav, general secretary of the trade union Majur Adhikar Manch.
On Monday, as preparations were underway for the US President’s visit to Gujarat, security agencies of India and the US met at the Sardar Patel stadium in Ahmedabad to review security preparedness for the event on February 25. Apart from drones, CCTV cameras and Indian snipers will be deployed at all strategic locations.
Officials from the US Security Service also met with top officials of the city crime branch, city police, Special Protection Group (SPG) Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) and Intelligence Bureau, as per sources quoted by the Times of India.
Furthermore, the movement of trains on the Ahmedabad-Mehsana track will be halted for 90 minutes, between 10 am and 8 pm on February 24, when the US President’s motorcade goes from the Ahmedabad airport to Gandhi Ashram and from Gandhi Ashram to Motera stadium.
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The Shiv Sena, in an editorial in the Sena mouthpiece Saamana, likened the elaborate preparations underway for the US President’s visit to the “slave mentality” of Indians.
“Before Independence, British King or Queen used to visit one of their slave nations like India. The kind of preparations going on from taxpayers’ money for the arrival of Donald Trump is similar to it. This reflects the slave mentality of Indians,” it said.
The editorial further took a jibe at the construction of a wall in Ahmedabad and said that the US president’s trip would neither stop the fall of rupee’s value in forex market nor offer betterment to those (slum dwellers) behind the wall.
“Former prime minister Indira Gandhi had once given the slogan ‘Garibi Hatao’, which was ridiculed for a long time. It seems now Modi’s plan is ‘Garibi chupao’ (hide poverty),” the editorial in the Marathi publication further said.
Additionally, the Gujarat Congress has threatened to stage a protest on February 24 outside the newly built cricket stadium in Ahmedabad against the BJP if the Centre fails to take an appropriate decision over the apex court’s ruling on reservation in jobs for SC/ST communities.