MHADA has no free land for rlys

FEBRUARY 25: The rehabilitation of slums on railway land remained unresolved even today.A Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Author...

FEBRUARY 25: The rehabilitation of slums on railway land remained unresolved even today.

A Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) official informed the Bombay High Court that most of the tenements available with them have already been taken by another state agency and the only tenements available to the Railways would be those in the open market category.To which Chief Justice Y K Sabharwal stated, “If this is so, then we might have to order MHADA to make tenements at concessional rates available only for the Railways.”

The matter is to be taken up again tomorrow. The Bombay High Court today ordered the housing secretary, the chief executive officer of Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA), the chief executive officer of MHADA and the general managers of both the Western and Central Railways to remain in court tomorrow.

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However, the Railways counsel informed the court that the GMs were away in Delhi.

A division bench of the Chief Justice and Justice A P Shah were hearing apetition filed by Citizens For a Just Society (CFJS) against the Railways for the encroachments on railway tracks posing a grave danger to the lives and limbs of over five million daily rail passengers.

The bench pulled up the state government counsel for the absence of a senior functionary from MHADA since despite the court’s directives, only a deputy chief engineer of the agency was present in court today.

In his submission, assistant government pleader Belose told the court that of the 4500 tenements available with MHADA, around 2000 have already been taken by the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) for rehabilitating the project affected people for their flyover projects. The Railways, according to him, had been offered the tenements but since they failed to respond to the offer, the tenements were already taken.

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However, 5000 tenements in the free sale category were available and if the Railways were to buy them they would have to pay the full sum of Rs 3.60 lakh for eachtenement.

The bench also turned down the plea by counsel for Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centre (SPARC), Mustafa Doctor, that the amount to be paid by the railway slumdwellers be reduced from the earlier decided Rs 1.3 lakh.

“Many of the slumdwellers might not be able to pay this sum, and may be able to avail of loans of only around Rs 50,000 to Rs 60,000,” he said. The Chief Justice said that this could not be considered and the decision could not be uniform for everybody. It would be harsh to some while favouring others.

The Chief Justice also turned down SPARC’s plea that land be made available to them to build houses for the slumdwellers. “What would you be doing with the extra FSI? You are acting as builders and developers in the matter,” he observed.