The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has washed its hands of the responsibility to maintain flats where it has rehabilitated canal bank dwellers saying they must form co-operatives to maintain these flats.

“The residents of the flats have to come forward and set up their own co-operatives to maintain the flats as neither the KMC nor the state government will take the life-long responsibility of maintaining these flats,” said Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya while speaking at a ceremony organised by the KMC and Kolkata Environmental Improvement Project (KEIP) to hand over keys of the flats built for rehabilitating those who were evicted from the banks of Tollygunge-Panchanangram Canal.

“We are committed to look after the interests of the weaker sections of the society. Over 800 flats will be built under this scheme of which keys of around 400 were handed over today. The rest will be handed over by March this year,” he added.

The KMC was bound to rehabilitate the canal bank dwellers as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) that funded the Kolkata Environmental Improvement Project (KEIP) had put a condition that people living there should be rehabilitated before the work started on the project.

Currently, the state is supposed to rehabilitate around 832 families that were residing along the Tollygunge-Panchanangram Canal.