BMC calls on private landowners for its maiden PAPs housing scheme

To attract developers and private landowners to help build housing units for those affected by various infrastructure projects, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will offer financial incentives. With housing units at Mahul ruled out after the Bombay High Court (HC) order last year and protests by the project affected people (PAP) demanding rehabilitation in the vicinity, BMC was prompted to identify public plots in its jurisdiction.

This is the first time that BMC has come up with its own housing scheme to rehabilitate PAPs and will not have to depend on agencies.

The civic body will provide incentives in the form of premiums apart from the extra floor space index (FSI) of up to four and transfer of development rights (TDR). The civic body has a list of around 32,000 PAPs already.

BMC is of the view that chipping in private landowners and developers will give an impetus to several infrastructure projects in the city that are stuck due to PAP’s unwillingness to shift from their locality. “This is financially viable for BMC as well as it is not spending on land acquisition. Even if we offer premiums to private owners to help us with the housing scheme on their plots, we will still be paying a much lesser amount than what it would incur for land acquisition and construction,” said a senior official.

Shiv Sena MLA Prakash Surve had raised the issue during the District Planning and Development committee meeting held last month chaired by deputy CM Ajit Pawar. “I had a meeting with PAPs from the Dahisar river widening and rejuvenation project last month. They are legal residents of the area and need to be rehabilitated around the same locality,” said Surve.

Some PAPs from the Dahisar river project have already been allotted housing units in Mira Road. BMC has undertaken several big-ticket projects such as the Goregaon-Mulund Link Road, Worli-Sewri elevated connector project, 36-km cycle track along the Tansa pipeline and widening of Mithi river. These projects will lead to the displacement of thousands of families, whose houses are in the way. Apart from this, several other roads and drain widening projects will also need PAP tenements. The civic body had invited a bid earlier offering incentives in the form of TDR only, but it got no response.

Last year in December, BMC had invited expression of interest from private landowners or developers to construct 1,000 PAP flats in each of the seven administrative zones of the city.

“Earlier, if anyone had land far away from the city, they would hand it over to us and avail TDR. But PAPs want to be rehabilitated nearby and within the city limits. Since we don’t have dispersed land across the city to fulfill the demands of PAPs for housing units near their own locality, we are calling on private landowners,” said a senior BMC official

Another official said, “The gap between PAP units we need and the land available with us is huge. We need to find more plots to create more tenements/ housing units.”

The civic body has 17,000 tenements in Mahul, of which nearly 12,000 have been handed over to PAPs from different projects. In September last year, the HC had prohibited BMC from shifting any more families to Mahul, in the wake of complaints of severe air pollution.