Maharashtra government has now allowed thousands of Sindhi and Punjabi refugees who migrated from Pakistan to carry out self-assessment and survey of their properties.
This is to facilitate regularisation, sale of house or redevelopment of properties without any hurdles, and is likely to benefit thousands of refugees including as many as 7,000 families in Mumbai alone.
31 colonies
Earlier this year, the BJP government had provided free hold of the land to as many as 31 colonies, where refugees have been residing since Partition but did not own land rights. This, even though most of these structures were in a dilapidated condition and needed urgent repairs.
Some needed to be regularised owing to encroachment and extensions beyond permissible limits carried out over the last fifty years. The Displaced Persons (Compensation and Rehabilitation) Act, 1954 — which governs such colonies — has already been amended once by the government.
According to the fresh directives issued on June 14, 2018, the State government has directed a self-survey of the Compensation Pool Properties (CPP), which were meant for refugees in general.
A pool of plots from the CPP was allotted to those who migrated from Pakistan, while the land rights were never transferred to them until this year.
Categorising properties
Mumbai has an estimated population of 7,000 Sindhi and Punjabi refugees residing in Kurla, Chembur and Mulund in refugee colonies. “Most of these properties have already been given rights so they now need to be categorised under different types following a survey. We have received representation from the elected representatives and members of the Sindhi community that they be allowed to carry out their own land survey and categorisation for future development,” said an official of the State Urban Development Department (UDD).
Land rights
“These then will have to be categorised later as residential and commercial properties,” the official added.
So far, the refugees were not allowed to sell their units without permission from the government.
They were not even allowed to carry out redevelopment since they did not have the land rights. If they did do that, an unearned income as fee was charged from them. “This rule was acting as a hindrance both in redevelopment as well as sale of refugee properties,” the official added.
