SHIMLA: The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has strongly opposed the merger of a number of villages adjacent to the capital town and presently falling under the Special Area Development Authority into the Shimla Municipal Corporation.

In a press release, the district secretary of the party, Sanjay Chauhan, said the Government's decision for a forcible merger was totally undemocratic and against the wishes of the local villagers.

Expressing surprise at the Congress desperation to merge these villages into the Municipal Corporation, the CPI (M) said the Virbhadra Singh government had done this earlier too and had faced the wrath of local inhabitants. The people from these forcibly merged areas had gone in for a yearlong agitation and later the BJP-led government formed Notified Area Committees. But unfortunately no democratic process of elections could take place in these NACs.

"The Congress government after resuming power in 2003 changed these NACs into a Special Area Development Authority (SADA) and grossly neglected the process of development in these areas," charged the CPI (M). "The Authority under bureaucratic supervision miserably failed to discharge its functions and became the biggest institution of harassment of the common masses living here."

The party also hit out at the poor functioning of the Municipal Corporation. "Erratic water supply, leaking sewerage system, garbage stockpiles on the roads and no street lights are permanent features of the Municipal Corporation here," alleged the party, which is planning to start an agitation along with the local residents. "There would be total chaos if fresh areas are merged into the MC when it has failed to handle its present jurisdiction," it added.

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