MMRDA hands over Project Affected Persons' rehabilitation work to BMC

At a time when the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) are known not to have the best of relations, the former has agreed to hand over tenements to the BMC to rehabilitate its Project Affected Persons (PAPs) at no cost.

Earlier, the authority had demanded Rs3 lakh for each tenement.
At a recent MMRDA meeting, a proposal to hand over 8,570 tenements — most of them located in Chembur and Mahul — to the BMC and other agencies was discussed and approved.

Besides BMC, even the Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT) and Tata Power Company have demanded tenements for rehabilitating their PAPs.

In 2010, the MMRDA had decided to give 3,289 tenements to the BMC for Rs3 lakh per tenement under the Mahatma Gandhi Pathkranti Yojana. The same rate is also applicable to the MbPT and Tata Power.

But, in May, municipal commissioner Subodh Kumar wrote to the MMRDA requesting it to hand over the tenements for free. 

“The civic body needs a number of tenements to rehabilitate PAPs of the Mithi river development as well as the Brimstowad project, which has received grant even from the central government. We have received about 814 tenements from the MMRDA for which it charged Rs3 lakh each. However, it is pertinent to note that the authority has got these tenements free of cost in exchange of Transfer of Development Rights sold to various developers throughout Mumbai. As per the Development Control Regulations (DCR), these tenements should be given to the BMC free of cost,” Kumar wrote in the letter, a copy of which is with DNA.

Bharatiya Janata Party corporator and MMRDA member Ashish Shelar said that during the meeting, civic officials demanded that the houses for PAPs be handed over to them at no cost.

“Initially, the MMRDA was not ready to allot the tenements free of cost. However, when the BMC conveyed that as per the DCR 33 (10), it is ready to pay the maintenance cost and for the security of the tenements until the possession is given, the authority finally agreed,” said Shelar.

“The payment for the tenements already handed over to BMC under the scheme will anyway be charged to the civic body. In future, though, we will not charge Rs3 lakh for the houses,” said a senior MMRDA official.