The Maharashtra government will formulate a new scheme under the development control rules (DCR) to facilitate redevelopment of the 100-year-old Bombay Development Directorate (BDD) chawls in South Mumbai.
New sub-clause
Spread over 93-acres, the chawls will now be redeveloped under a new sub-clause that will be added to Rule 33 of the DCR.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday approved a proposal by the State’s housing department to extend the DCR to facilitate the long-pending redevelopment.
Currently, under clause 33, there are 25 sub-schemes to facilitate redevelopment of old properties by way of additional floor space index (FSI), and another 33 schemes that apply to the development of private property such as 33 (4) for additional FSI for construction of luxury hotels and 33 (24) for construction of multi-level parking spaces. The newly-approved proposal will create a 26th sub-scheme.
Senior state officials said the new scheme will be tailor-made for the redevelopment of 207 structures in the chawls that will cease to exist once the redevelopment is complete.
Better incentives
The scheme proposes that in addition to developers getting better incentives — additional FSI — residents would get 550 sq.ft. homes in lieu of their current 160-sq.ft. tenements. One official said,
“We have tried fitting the BDD chawl redevelopment scheme under various clauses including 33 (9) (cluster redevelopment), but it fell through on the questions of higher incentive for developers, and ownership of the land, currently being held by the state government.”
The Rs 2,000-crore redevelopment plan was first mooted by the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) in 2010, but it has been stuck at the proposal stage for various reasons, including lack of interest from developers and the loss of the project file in the fire that gutted Mantralaya in 2012.
Senior officials said that once the new scheme is formulated, another 33 schemes will be created to apply to hundreds of structures on the 37 acres of State-owned land in the Bandra Kurla Complex, and to the development of Oshiwara District Centre, Andheri. Another official told The Hindu , “Both these plots have been taken away from the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA, the special planning authority for the city) in November, and could be redeveloped under the new 33 scheme.”
This is not the first time the State government will extend rule 33 of DCR to facilitate development of a property; in the past, it formulated clause 33 (10)(AA) for the redevelopment of Dharavi, 33 (11) for the redevelopment of certain structures under the Urban Land Ceiling Act, 33(12), for projects being carried out with World-Bank assistance, and 33 (13) for development of tenements for project-affected people.
