The Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) today told the Bombay High Court that it was yet to recover over 13,000 square metres of constructed area from the redevelopers of 50 cessed buildings in the city.
Cess buildings are old buildings which pay a cess or fee to the state towards their repair and redevelopment.
A bench of justices N H Patil and N W Sambre had last week pulled up the MHADA for not being concerned about the fact that private developers, who redeveloped the old and dilapidated cess buildings, often failed to hand over parts of the buildings back to the authority as per the initial agreement between them.
The court had asked the MHADA to come up with a procedure to prevent such a practice in the future.
MHADA's lawyer told the court today that criminal complaints had been filed against 29 developers for failing to hand over the surplus area to the housing body.
Show cause notices had been issued to four other developers for default, the lawyer said.
The bench was also informed that in case of 153 completed projects, involving redevelopment of cessed buildings, the MHADA had received a total surplus area of 31,326 square metres and also a sum of Rs 38 crore by way of premium towards a lesser surrendered area.
The lawyer said the MHADA was expecting 90,258 square metres of constructed area from 150 ongoing redevelopment projects and 46,481 square metres from 106 projects, which were yet to start.
The lawyer said over 13,000 square metres of constructed area from the redevelopers of 50 cessed buildings in the city were yet to be recovered by the MHADA.
The court was hearing a public interest litigation petition, filed by city resident Kamlakar Shenoy, claiming that the MHADA had failed to take possession of about two lakh square metres of constructed area which, as per the petition, was valued at Rs 14,000 crore.
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