Tuesday was the biggest demolition exercise that civic authorities in Rajkot have ever made, with over 1,300 houses being demolished in a massive exercise to eliminate illegal settlements along the Aji River in Gujarat. This move, which was spearheaded by the Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC) was done with significant security presence to ensure that no untoward incidents occur.
Mahesh Jani, the Deputy Municipal Commissioner, claimed that close to 1,500 notices had been issued to the property before the drive and around 681 of the houses were on the riverbank. At around 2 pm on Tuesday, Municipal Commissioner Tushar Sumera stated that some 1,350 houses were already demolished.
More than 2,500 police officers were deployed at the site to make the operation run smoothly. The security layout consisted of the local police, Special Operations Group (SOG) teams, Quick Response Teams (QRT), State Reserve Police Force staff, surveillance, and drone surveillance.
According to the authorities, the demolition is a bigger project to eradicate encroachments and construction of infrastructure in the region. The government housing scheme is to rehabilitate the displaced families. The law enforcement agencies also intend to build a new road along the cleared stretch in less than a week.
The operation was of large scale and this meant it needed massive logistics. The region was split into seven zones, whereby senior officers and technical groups were in charge of overseeing the work. In excess of 260 machines were used which included JCBs, tractors, dumpers, breakers, and extreme hydraulic excavators, and these were mostly used to bring down a multi-storey structure and also the big bungalows.
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