Mumbai: Mooted about 25 years ago, the revamp of the century-old Bombay Development Directorate (BDD) chawls in Mumbai, covering 34 hectares, is steadily taking shape with delivery of the first set of apartments scheduled for next month.
Overall, the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) has set a target of completing 25 percent of the Rs 17,085.64-crore project by this December, according to officials.
The BDD chawls were set up by the British in 1920 to build low-cost tiny homes for mill workers, labourers who worked at the docks and junior government employees. Not only have the buildings become decrepit over the years, but the size of the families living in the cubbyhole 160-square feet houses has also grown, making redevelopment a necessity.
Though the revamp of BDD chawls has been in the pipeline for more than two decades, the ball was set rolling only in 2016 with the Maharashtra government deciding to appoint MHADA as the nodal agency and implement the project on an engineering, procurement and construction model, commonly known as a cash contract.
Nine years on, the first set of 556 apartments, measuring 500 square feet each, is ready and scheduled to be handed over to BDD chawl residents by 15 August, and work on more is steadily progressing, MHADA officials told ThePrint.
“Our biggest challenge in implementing the BDD chawls project so far has been people’s lack of confidence that the redevelopment will actually take shape and they will get bigger, newer houses. As we start handing over completed tenements, it will boost people’s confidence that MHADA can actually deliver,” Milind Borikar, vice chairman and chief officer of MHADA’s Mumbai board, told ThePrint.
MHADA has also built a show flat at the site for the residents to walk through and get a feel of what their new residence will look like, he added.
Also Read: 6 toilets for 20 houses, inadequate testing: Why Mumbai’s Worli chawls are a Covid hotspot
Work gathering pace
The BDD chawls are spread across four locations—Worli, Naigaon (Dadar), NM Joshi Marg in Lower Parel and Sewri—a predominantly Marathi-speaking belt. The Sewri chawls, however, are not part of the BDD revamp project as they come under the Mumbai Port Trust, under the central government.
The BDD redevelopment project’s scope includes 121 chawl buildings in Worli, 42 in Naigaon and 32 at NM Joshi Marg. Every floor in each chawl building has about 80 tenements that are 160 square feet in size.
The Worli site is the largest with 9,689 tenants to rehabilitate in all. Of these, 295 are commercial tenants, while 9,394 are residential. The cost of the Worli project alone is Rs 11,744.26 crore.
Work on 3,888 tenements is currently underway, according to data from MHADA.
At Naigaon, 3,344 tenants are to be rehabilitated, and work on 1,940 units is currently underway. The cost of redeveloping the Naigaon chawls is pegged at Rs 2,902.39 crore.
At NM Joshi Marg, there are 2,530 tenants with work having started on 1,280 tenements.
MHADA officials said they are still in the process of completely vacating the chawls, and hope that the completion and delivery of tenements will speed things up.
Earning people’s confidence
With the BDD chawls redevelopment project having had several false starts, the residents have been wary of putting their trust in the government and moving to temporary accommodations to make way for the redevelopment of the chawls.
Over the years, successive state governments have taken multiple measures to smoothen out the creases in the BDD redevelopment project and win people’s confidence.
For instance, for the tenants unwilling to move to transit houses, the state government decided to offer the option of paying them a monthly rental, like private builders do. Accordingly, several residents are being paid a monthly rent allowance of Rs 25,000.
“We are also providing them a rental allowance for 11 months at a time. We had presentations with them where we showed them the kind of project that has been planned at the site, the type of construction, amenities and so on,” Borikar said.
Moreover, all tenants are also being provided with one parking spot per flat. Earlier, the state government had decided to provide one parking spot for every two flats. By 2022, people had started moving out of the chawls and the MHADA could start demolishing the buildings in phases.
Overall, officials are hoping that the BDD redevelopment project would be completed by about 2028.
According to the tenders, the contractors have been given eight years to fully implement the Worli project and seven years for the other two sites. For the Worli chawls, the eight-year period ends in January 2027. For NM Joshi Marg and Naigaon, the contracts were awarded earlier than Worli, in 2017. So, as such, the seven-year completion period lapsed in April 2024, post which the contractors of both projects were granted an extension as the project was slow to pick up due to the initial reluctance of residents to vacate premises.
The deadline for the Naigaon chawls redevelopment now stands at December 2029, while that for the NM Joshi Marg set of chawls stands at June 2030.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
Also Read: Rs 17,000 cr revamp for Mumbai’s British-era BDD chawls: Residents hopeful, planners have doubts