Mumbai: The Maharashtra government has completed a survey of around 10,000 structures of the roughly two lakh-odd estimated hutments in Dharavi — considered one of the world’s largest slums — to determine eligibility for free housing under the project to revamp the slum sprawl into glitzy high-rises. It also aims to wrap up the complete survey by the end of the fiscal year 2024-25.
However, while officials are working towards the ambitious target, the fate of the much-delayed project once again hangs in the balance considering the politics around it, especially with assembly polls in Maharashtra being less than three months away. There is a chance of the project going back to the drawing board depending on the outcome of the elections.
Meanwhile, the survey itself has become controversial with opposition parties alleging it is a strategy to move a large number of Dharavi residents outside the neighbourhood, which sprawls across prime real estate, adjacent to the plush Bandra Kurla Complex business district.
“In the 20-year history of the project, this is the first time that it has reached this stage, but with the elections coming up, there is some uncertainty. We are, however, going ahead full steam with our work for now,” an official working on the Dharavi redevelopment project told ThePrint requesting anonymity.
SVR Srinivas, chief executive of the state government’s Dharavi redevelopment project authority, did not respond to ThePrint’s calls and text messages. This report will be updated if and when a response is received.
The Dharavi redevelopment project was first conceived nearly two decades ago.
With Dharavi being a complex area comprising long stretches of multi-storey slums, standalone buildings, commercial establishments, industries and tanneries, the project has so far been a non-starter despite previous governments having made a few attempts to tender it out.
In July last year, the Eknath Shinde-led Mahayuti government, comprising the Shinde-led Shiv Sena, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), awarded the bid for the project to real estate firm Adani Realty, which had emerged as the lowest bidder.
The rival Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena and the Congress have opposed the bid, raising questions over certain concessions the state government has given for the project as well as the survey, and alleging that the government is favouring the developer.
The Shiv Sena (UBT) and Congress are part of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), which also includes NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar).
Thackeray last month had also said that the MVA will fully scrap the bid awarded to industrialist Gautam Adani’s firm if it comes to power.
The MVA’s performance in this year’s Lok Sabha election was much better than the ruling Mahayuti, stirring talks of a possibility of the former being able to carry the momentum into the assembly polls too. The MVA won 30 of Maharashtra’s 48 seats, the Mahayuti won 17 seats, and one went to an Independent who had given support to the MVA.
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Surveys of Dharavi
By the end of March this year, the Dharavi redevelopment project authority started surveying the population of Dharavi to determine the residents’ eligibility for in-situ free housing as part of the project.
According to the stated norms for the project, those living in hutments that existed since on or before 1 January, 2000, will be rehabilitated into free houses of 350 square feet each within Dharavi itself. Those living in structures created between 1 January, 2000, and 1 January, 2011, will get houses for Rs 2.5 lakh outside Dharavi, within the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, as part of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) scheme. They will also be offered rental housing options.
The last survey conducted in Dharavi was in 2008. It had identified around 64,000 ground-floor structures as being eligible for free housing in Dharavi.
“We did a 3D mapping with drones of the entire area. The 2008 survey had only taken ground floors of hutments into account. Now, we are surveying all floors considering it has been about 15 years since the last survey,” a second state government official associated with the Dharavi project told ThePrint.
The drone mapping, which was wrapped up just last month, has revealed that there are about two lakh structures to be surveyed.
The officials are first doing a lane-by-lane recce by foot, followed by a Lidar survey, a sophisticated method of mapping using remote sensing technology.
Officials then collaborate their findings from the two exercises and every house is allotted a unique number.
Three-member survey teams are fanning out door-to-door across Dharavi — one person handles the tab, another does the actual measurement, and the third collects documents from people.
“All this data is linked to the unique number of the house, the documents are scanned at the spot, the team takes a video of the occupant, and pictures of the family and everything are uploaded on the tab,” the above-mentioned official said.
He added that by and large, the people have been cooperative so far, but there are also some who are completely pessimistic about the project. “There is, however, a willingness among everyone to have their records registered with us.”
The politics around Dharavi
Since 2004, every time there has been an election, the Dharavi redevelopment project has gained momentum, only to be stalled yet again.
With the project having had many false starts, this time, the state government, while floating bid documents, introduced some measures to sweeten the deal and make the large redevelopment project more palatable for developers to take the risk.
Mainly, the state government has allowed the developer to use Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) generated from the project anywhere in Mumbai as against the earlier norms, according to which TDR can only be used in underdeveloped areas with development potential.
TDR is a concept that allows developers to transfer the unused development potential of a plot and use it elsewhere in zones of the city that are not fully developed.
One of the measures taken by the state government to make the project more favourable for the developer is to be able to use TDR without indexation.
Generally, the value of the TDR is indexed to the ready reckoner rate of the land, and the value of slum TDR is typically lower than other forms of TDR.
The state’s Dharavi redevelopment project authority has also sought land at multiple places in Mumbai to house residents found to be ineligible in the survey.
“The land will be owned by the government, not the developer, and we will create proper townships there to accommodate the ineligible residents rather than simply displacing them,” the first official quoted above said, adding that the authority is hoping to get 500-600 acres of land at different locations in Mumbai for this.
This proposal too has drawn flak from the Thackeray-led Shiv Sena, which has said that it is “a ploy of the Shinde-led government to throw Dharavi residents out”.
“I am not against Dharavi redevelopment. All residents of Dharavi should get houses there itself, this is what we are demanding. The ploy of the Shinde government to declare Dharavi residents ineligible and make 20 Dharavis of one Dharavi across Mumbai through Adani is unacceptable. We won’t let anyone destroy Mumbai,” Thackeray said Wednesday while speaking to reporters in Delhi.
Not only has Thackeray demanded that all Dharavi residents be given houses in Dharavi itself, he has also asked for the size of the houses to be 500 square feet instead of 350 square feet as per the current plan.
“The developer has been given incentives that no one else in Mumbai has got. The developer can use the TDR generated here across Mumbai. We will not let such wrong things happen in Mumbai,” Thackeray added.
The project has also been given an additional 46 acres of railway land to be made a part of the project. On a part of it, the Dharavi redevelopment project authority is supposed to build living quarters and amenities for the railways, while the rest of it will be used for the Dharavi revamp project. According to data from the state government, Dharavi is spread across 259 hectares, of which 173.9 hectares will be part of the redevelopment project. Of this, 147.4 hectares are estimated to be currently occupied by slums.
“We are applying for environmental clearance to start the construction of the deliverables to the railways,” the second official said.
Congress’s Varsha Gaikwad, who was MLA of Dharavi until she got elected as MP of Mumbai North Central in June, has also criticised the plan to allot lands across Mumbai, including some salt pan land, to the Dharavi project to house ineligible residents.
“All Dharavikars (Dharavi residents) should be rehabilitated in Dharavi itself. All this talk of eligible and ineligible is just a ruse. We reject it,” she said in a long post on the project on X (formerly Twitter) last month.
Mumbai has had a tradition of multibillionnaires donating land to the government for public good. But in the case of Modani & Co., this tradition has been reversed. Their relentless land grab in Mumbai knows no bounds and the @mieknathshinde sarkar is willing to do anything to… pic.twitter.com/lu8nGA1Yrm
— Prof. Varsha Eknath Gaikwad (@VarshaEGaikwad) June 13, 2024
BJP Mumbai president Ashish Shelar hit back at Thackeray Wednesday, saying that he is Mumbai’s “enemy number one.”
“The Mumbai civic body was in your (Thackeray-led Shiv Sena’s control) control for 25 years, you (Thackeray) were the CM for 2.5 years. How did Dharavi get created in the first place? These slum sprawls grew over 25 years simply because of vote bank politics,” Shelar told reporters in Mumbai.
What thickens the plot slightly is the fact that the third partner in the MVA, Sharad Pawar’s NCP, has been conspicuously silent on the project so far.
Pawar is known to have been an old friend of Adani and the bonhomie has caused friction between the undivided NCP and its allies in the past too.
Last week, Pawar met chief minister Shinde, and there was ample speculation that the meeting was about the Dharavi project, though both sides stayed silent on the discussions behind closed doors.
(Edited by Radifah Kabir)
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