Dharavi redevelopment survey begins, 105 houses surveyed

MUMBAI: The Dharavi Redevelopment Project Private Limited (DRPPL), a joint venture between the state government and Adani Realty, began its survey on Monday to collect data from lakhs of slum dwellers in Dharavi. On the first day, it surveyed around 105 tenements.

“This is an important day for us,” said S V R Srinivas, Officer on Special Duty, DRPPL. “It is on the basis of this survey that all our future development will happen. We have begun numbering the houses with unique IDs. Our teams will carry out a socio-economic survey of all the households in Dharavi.”

Srinivas said the last survey was done in 2008 and the criteria were different. “In the earlier survey, the upper structure was not calculated,” he said. “We will be giving free houses in this scheme to all ground-floor structures which are protected as per government policies. The tenants on the upper floors will have to buy flats on hire-purchase under the concessional housing scheme, which is to be carried out on the salt pan lands.”

The data collected will be used by the government to determine the rehabilitation eligibility criteria of the residents. It will also create, for the first time ever, a ‘Digital Dharavi,’ an advanced library of one of the world’s largest shantytowns.

The survey began from Kamla Raman Nagar near Matunga station (Western Railway), with a unique number being given to each tenement. This will be followed by laser mapping of the respective lanes, known as a Lidar survey. A trained team will visit every tenement with an indigenously developed application to scan documents.