No Dumping Ground in Our Midst, Say Vasai Residents

The municipality wants to parcel out the land to developers but imagine having a dumping ground and STP in the middle of a new development. Clearly, the reservation is getting in the way of these plans DHANANJAY GAWADE, Swaraj Abhiyan, a local social organisation.

- Megha Sood

MUMBAI: In Vasai west, this is what pushback looks like—9,000 residents of the idyllic Gaas village uniting to let the municipality know they won't allow a dumping ground and sewage treatment plant (STP) to be slipped under their noses and forced into their midst. The protest lasted just two days but it drew results. The Vasai Virar City Municipal Corporation (VVCMC) has withdrawn its application to shift a reservation for the dumping ground and STP from Agarwal Nagar in Vasai east to a 1,500-acre plot in Gaas.

The VVCMC, and before them the Palghar collector, has been eyeing the Gaas plot for a dumping ground and STP for 18 years. So, batting the proposal is not new to the 5,500-odd residents of this predominantly Christian village often described as 'Mini Goa' for the ancestral mansions that dot the surrounding farmland.

The latest protest erupted when a social activist spotted a public notice in a local Marathi newspaper published by the VVCMC, inviting the mandatory objections and suggestions to a proposal to shift the reservation from Agarwal Nagar to the 1,500-acre plot in Gaas village.

The move to shift the reservation comes after the VVCMC undertook a massive demolition drive at Agarwal Nagar, where it razed 41 unauthorised buildings between November 2024 and end-Jan 2025, most of them occupied. In the midst of the colossal amount of Floor Space Index (FSI) freed up potentially for sale to builders is 48 acres of partly private and partly public land reserved for the contentious dumping ground and STP.