BMC chief delegated SRA power to rehouse PAPs

MUMBAI: The urban development department (UD) has modified Regulation 33(10) of the Development Control Promotion Regulations to delegate rehab powers for slums on public land to the BMC commissioner. These powers were earlier vested with the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) and MMRDA heads.

On December 17, 2021, the then municipal commissioner wrote to the UD that the BMC was facing an acute shortage of tenements for rehousing project-affected people (PAPs) displaced by infrastructure projects like road-widening and storm water drainage works and requested that the powers be delegated to the BMC commissioner. The UD has now approved the request.

In another notification, the UD also modified a clause in the Unified Development Control and Promotion Regulations (UDCPR, applicable to municipal corporations other than Mumbai city). Clause 14.8.1 (iii)(g) of UDCPR mandated that areas declared as slums be included in the Urban Renewal Cluster (URC); as a result, several slum projects were automatically included in the 45 URCs that were part of the Thane cluster development project. The notification dated February 20 has modified this clause to allow slum projects under consideration with the SRA before June 27, 2022 to be developed with the consent of the high-powered committee.

Thane BJP MLA Sanjay Kelkar said the modification would give relief to slum dwellers in at least 16 to 18 slum projects which got included in the Thane cluster development scheme. “In many of them, developers were about to start construction under the SRA,” he said. “However, once they were included in cluster development, the process stopped. Nearly 16 such SRA societies approached me and asked to be excluded from the cluster development project and allowed to redevelop under the SRA.”

Kelkar had been raising this issue in assembly sessions as well. “Cluster development is a revolutionary idea, but it is a large project which will move at its own pace,” he said. “Slum dwellers want to move into their developed homes as early as possible. I would urge the government to also exclude post-June 2022 SRA projects which have completed due process, and allow them to redevelop.”

Shinde has been in favour of cluster development in Thane ever since he became an MLA. In August 2023, an agreement to develop the Hazuri and Kisan Nagar clusters in the first phase was signed and in December 2023, Shinde performed the bhumi pujan for the Kisan Nagar cluster. Over 10,000 tenements have been planned in Phase 1.