SPPL yet to access roads to clearance

Express Newsline had at the beginning of this month reported that the SPPL had opened tenders for housing projects at Dindoshi (4500 housing units), Turbhe-Mandale (3500) and Wadala (900). Though the SRA had not approved the projects, the planning authority for the projects, the SPPL went on ahead. As of today, a good three weeks later, the SPPL seems to be exactly where it was earlier.

Access roads for the five hectareland at Turbhe-Mandale remains a pipedream. The suburban collector of Mumbai has sent files to the state Land and Revenue department for permission to grant access site for Dindoshi land and the Indian Hume Pipe land at Wadala continues to languish in the Urban Land Ceiling Regulation Act quagmire.

“We have written to the SPPL for a joint inspection of the land site,” said a CR official in the related department, exasperated, “but we are still awaiting an answer from them”. He opines that the CR is more than willing to help the SPPL, but the SPPL does not seem to have got its act together. SPPL is facing a logistical problem at Turbhe-Mandale where the only access to the plot of land is through railway land – an underpass at Mankhurd – which could be widened to allow the vehicles to pass through.

“We believe they just want an underpass wide enough to let a few trucks through,” said the official, “but they have not submitted a detailed plan at all. Let their engineers come, we can go to the sitetogether and look into its feasibility. But in spite of my writing to them, they have not got back”.

He is not the only one who believes the SPPL are not coordinating their efforts right. Exasperated builders are wondering why it had to go through tendering of the projects if these basics are yet to be clarified.

Bureaucratic decision making is not making it easier for the SPPL either. The files for the largest project at Dindoshi, for example, is lying with the state department of Land and Revenue. The reason? The plot at Aarey Village needs a 120 feet access road from an adjacent plot which houses RBI’s Indira Gandhi Centre for Research and Development. This being a government land, the permission to use this for an access road vests with the Suburban Collector of Mumbai, Vasant Gawai. “Of course, it is in my jurisdiction,” says Gawai, “but the final decision rests with the state department. If they okay it, I can go ahead.”

The SRA on its part does not believe the SPPL is undertaking a publicproject. “For us the SPPL is just like any other builder, who has to follow the laid down norms,” argues an SRA official.

So until and unless the SPPL shows that it has got the requisite permissions for the construction of the access roads, there is no go. “All we can issue is a letter of intent, where we admit that the projects can be executed. But for the final letter of commencement, they will have to construct the access roads first.”

As for Wadala, with the authorities still unsure about the way the wind will blow now that the Centre has repealed the ULCRA, it is difficult to come to a decision.

The managing director of SPPL, M S Gill, however denies there is any problem. “We shall go through the projects. There is no reason why the SRA should not approve our projects,” he says optimistically.