Most man-made tragedies in Mumbai can be traced to failings of policy and urban planning. Like the city did a few months ago during the Elphinstone Road stampede, this time too, fingers are pointing to the haphazard planning of mill areas in Central Mumbai.
At least 14 people lost their lives in a fire that started at a restaurant in Kamala Mills, Parel, late Thursday night. Urban planners say, there has been half-hearted implementation of the 1991 formula for mill land redevelopment, changed at the whim and fancy of different regimes.
The original ‘one-third formula’ offered a bigger share of land to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation and Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority, but was later revised by the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party regime, giving the corporation a free hand in permitting greater floor space index in the region. Says mill workers’ leader Uday Bhat, “We urge the government to at least do a course correction now. The one-third formula to divide mill lands between the owners and workers was never properly implemented, leading to an explosion of construction activities without any regulatory monitoring.”
‘Regulate greed’
There has been rampant commercial exploitation of the mill lands over the years, he says. “Is this the development the government had promised when the mill lands were opened up for Mumbaikars? If this greed was regulated earlier, the incident would not have happened.”
The current Bharatiya Janata Party government has attempted to go back to the 1991 model. But the damage has been done, says an official who did not wish to be named. Another senior official of the housing department says, “The BMC has allowed more than the permitted floor space index to the structures in the mill compound over the years. These violations must be probed.”
BJP leader Ashish Shelar has demanded an investigation into the FSI violations,as did Amin Patel, senior Congress leader and MLA from Central Mumbai. Mr. Patel says, “It is unfortunate the way the BMC has allowed haphazard construction activity in mill lands... These mills were originally meant to house mill workers and their families.”
