Inundated with complaints, Maharashtra govt scraps Mumbai development plan

Cabinet bows to widespread opposition; asks civic body to draft new plan in 4 months

 

The Maharashtra government has scrapped the Mumbai Devel-opment Plan 2034, prepared by the municipal corporation, in the face of stiff opposition from political parties, non-government organisations (NGO) and leading personalities.

The BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has been asked to draft a fresh development plan within four months. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena are in a majority in the BMC, which is slated to go for elections in February 2017.

The government received a large number of complaints against the provisions of the development plan dealing with existing land use, reservation and floor-space index.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had recently constituted a three-member committee, led by Maharashtra Chief Secretary Swadhin Khastriya, to examine flaws in the contentious plan.

To the Cabinet, Fadnavis gave two options: To either allow the committee more time to come up with solutions, or to ask the BMC to draft new plans. The Cabinet accepted the second option.

Hailing it to be the victory of the vigilant citizens, the Opposition Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) said the government was forced to bow to public opinion. Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, which had organised workshop on development plan, welcomed the government’s decision.

“The development plan was a noose around the neck (of citizens). It is up to you if you want to cut the rope. If the agitation has to come on the streets, we will bring it on the streets,” lyricist Javed Akhtar had said.

Bollywood stars such as actor-filmmakers Aamir Khan and Farhan Akhtar, superstar Salman Khan and his father yesteryear scriptwriter Salim Khan and actor Riteish Deshmukh had suggested the government to rethink the plan, especially as the citizens were protesting against it.

Residents across the city had claimed the plans flagrant errors were a result of a gross lack of knowledge of the civic officials.

UNDER FOCUS
The draft of the Mumbai Development Plan 2034 was scrapped on Tuesday after running into rough weather from critics for ignoring issues that might affect citizens. Business Standard looks at four such issues:

• About two thirds of the 1,400-odd heritage structures and sites not mentioned. These include Town Hall; the Asiatic Society of Bombay; Marine Drive, with the second largest number of art deco buildings in the world; Mount Mary Church, Bandra; Five Gardens, Dadar-Matunga, and Bandra Railway Station
• Compromises the city’s open spaces with the 4,000-acre Aarey Colony in Goregaon likely to be the major sufferer
• The plan has a provision for a 34-km freeway along Mumbai’s western coastline, at a cost of Rs8,000 crore. Its construction would necessitate reclamation of 160 acres of land from the sea, impacting the livelihood of scores of fishing communities.
• Road-widening and construction plans would have badly hit suburban Mumbai with seven roads in Pali Hill itself, one of which cuts right through St Anne High School

The plan had proposed to increase Mumbai’s floor-space index considerably. Floor-space index, or ratio, is found by dividing the total area on all floors of the building (known as gross floor area) by area of the plot. So a an FSI of 2 means the total floor area in the building in twice the area of the plot — as in a multi-storey building.

It also opened up south Mumbai for utilisation of transfer of development rights (TDR) as floating FSI. Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) means making available certain amount of additional built up area in lieu of the area relinquished or surrendered by the owner of the land, so that he can use extra built up area either himself or transfer it to another in need of the extra built up area for an agreed sum of money.

The proposed increase in the Mumbai development plan, however, did not take into consideration physical or social infrastructure.

HDFC Securities, in a research paper, said the intent and scope of the plan was positive. However, there was a lack of clarity on issues such as FSI utilisation for society redevelopment and reduction in open space requirement to 10 per cent from 15 per cent, with clashes with an earlier Supreme Court ruling.

The plan also envisages that 10 per cent of built-up area in plots bigger than 2,000 sqm would be treated by the BMC as small tenements. But this clashes with the earlier rule of 20 per cent low-income group housing reservation.

Besides there was no clarity on fate of the circular on additional TDR that is linked to road width.

Citizens and political parties also objected to a variable FSI of 8, claiming that it would benefit the builders. Crowded areas such as Andheri and Dadar, with multiple modes of mass transport, have the highest FSI of 8.

Vast stretches of CST-Churchgate region, Dadar-Parel, Kurla and Andheri, in addition to some portions of Bandra, Ghatkopar, Goregaon, Borivali and Malad, are slated to get a high FSI of over 6.5.

BMC had strongly defended the FSI increase saying that it would ease the shortage of housing in Mumbai.

Gulam Zia, executive director, Knight Frank, said confusion in the new plan will delay new projects by at least a year. “Projects which would have come up three years from now, will not come up and supply will be hit. As a result, prices will shoot up.”

He added that developers would not put up new proposals till the row is settled and government officials will also be confused about clearing of new projects.

Furthermore, Pankaj Srivastava, COO, Maitreya Realtors & Constructions said the DP in the current format had been flawed from the concept stage. The many existing structures were in error.