The Mumbai Board of MHADA has said it will take back nearly 100 open plots that had been offered to individuals and agencies for residential development, in a lottery scheme around 30 years ago. Because of their failure to carry out any development on these spaces for the past three decades, the board has decided to take back these plots, said the chairman of MBRRB & member of MHADA, Vinod Ghosalkar, on Tuesday. These land parcels are located in prime areas of Mumbai, such as Borivli, Malad-Malvani, Gorai, Versova and Charkop. In the current real estate market, the property prices in these areas are high.
Interestingly, MHADA’s Mumbai board currently has no housing stock in the city for its lottery scheme. By acquiring these unused land parcels, it can build houses in Mumbai's prime suburbs, to offer in future lotteries.
From 1985 to 1994, the MHADA had undertaken a project under the Bombay Urban Development Project (BUDP) in Mumbai suburbs, with the assistance from the World Bank. Under this project, it offered cluster plots and bungalow plots through lottery. Apart from individual lottery winners, entities like Air India and the Reserve Bank of India were also given plots to develop houses for their employees. However, no work has been undertaken on these sites till date. Many of these land parcels have subsequently been encroached on or used as dumping grounds, said Ghosalkar.
“We will now start the process of acquiring these unused plots under the provision of MHADA Act. Whenever, a property is sold, there are certain conditions put. In this case, it was agreed that the offered land should be used for residential housing purpose. This has not been fulfilled, therefore MHADA has every right to acquire these land parcels,” Ghosalkar said.
BMC to be in charge of most utilities
The MHADA Mumbai Building Repair and Reconstruction Board has also decided that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will take care of water, road and sewage facilities in all MHADA colonies. Earlier, due to the involvement of the MHADA and the BMC, residents of these buildings were finding it difficult to resolve issues, following disputes between the two authorities on the action to be taken. However, on Tuesday, it was decided that residents could approach the BMC and get the work done.
