More compensation to landowners: State rejects BMC’S plan
MUMBAI: While approving the city’s development plan, the state government turned down the civic body’s proposal to give more incentives to landowners who will hand over their plots reserved for civic amenities.
Civic officials feel that getting land for amenities such as playgrounds, gardens, parking lots, hospitals, etc will become difficult sans better compensation following the implementation of the Development Control and Promotion Regulation (DCPR) 2034, a set of rules framed for implementation of the Development Plan 2034.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has made several reservations for amenities on private lands in its DP 2034 under its accommodation reservation policy. The policy provides incentives to landowners to develop or hand over reserved amenities by compensating them in terms of transferable development rights (TDR). The TDR is calculated on the area of the plot reserved for amenities.
In the new DP, BMC suggested that the owners be allowed to use floor space index (FSI)—A ratio that decides how tall a structure could be–for the entire plot in addition to the TDR for the reserved portion of the same.
Currently, land owners cannot use FSI of the reserved portion of land while developing the remaining plot.
A senior civic official said the BMC has to wait longer and spend crores to get the plots especially in prime areas. The change made by the state government is open for suggestions and objections by the citizens till June 2. Civic chief Ajoy Mehta said, “We are still relooking at this aspect of the DCPR.” Urban planners and housing experts said the current formula in the DP 1991 is not attractive for land owners which made implementation difficult.
Milind Changani, senior architect, said, “Owing to such provisions in the new DCPR, the overall permissible development rights reduces valuation of the plot. It leads to delay in implementation of the entire DP.”
The BMC has had a poor track record with DP implementation.