MUMBAI: Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar said on Wednesday that the World Bank's Inspection Panel Investigation Report has indicted the Bank for violating its own rehabilitation and resettlement policies, which had resulted in injustice to those displaced by the Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP).

Ms. Patkar told presspersons that the Maharashtra Government had arrested Raj Awasthi, secretary of the United Shop Owners Association, for daring to expose the true nature of the rehabilitation and had put him in jail since January 3. She said the records of the affected people were not accurate and even the NGOs appointed to facilitate the rehabilitation were criticised by the Inspection Panel. The main grievances came from the shopkeepers who were being given lesser space than they owned. She said the grievance redressal mechanism was only on paper.

The MUTP was going to displace the largest number of people in the world and it had a separate component for resettlement, Ms. Patkar pointed out. The Inspection Panel report said that adequate attention had not been paid to some of the most important aspects of resettlement, such as restoration of income. Flaws in gathering data appear to have resulted in major misstatements about the overall size of displacement, the report said.

While the panel appreciated the effort to involve NGOs in the project, it was concerned about the transfer of the main implementation responsibilities from State Government and municipal agencies to NGOs with "insufficient institutional capacity and knowledge to deal with the overwhelming magnitude of responsibilities." At the time of investigation, the resettlement sites lacked adequate access to schools, medical facilities and religious sites and the maintenance costs for buildings as well as the utility services were high, she noted.

Voicing concern over the development of Mumbai at the cost of the urban poor, she claimed that the prime land around Bandra Kurla complex was being vacated so that builders could take over.

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