Mumbai: The Dharavi Redevelopment Project Authority is currently preparing to commence construction work on the first set of buildings for the rehabilitation of residents of the Dharavi slum sprawl. The move pushes forward the long-delayed project.
The DRP has appealed to residents in the Dharavi parts concerned to finalise formal rental agreements with developer Navbharat Mega Developers Pvt Ltd and vacate their homes before the monsoon and the beginning of the school academic year in June 2026. It aims to build 11,000 rehabilitation tenements after the monsoon.
Navbharat Mega Developers is a special-purpose vehicle of the Maharashtra government, the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA), and the Adani Group.
The first set of 11,000 tenements, each 350 square feet, will be constructed in Dharavi’s Sector 6, which refers to the Matunga railway land obtained from the Indian Railways in various phases.
“Sector 6 is the least complex. It is the land we got from the Railways, and there are several vacant patches. So, we thought starting here would give the entire project a push,” a state government official associated with the project said, requesting anonymity.
The Dharavi revamp project—the first mooted in 2003—has had false starts since then. In 2022, the Adani Group secured the winning bid for the project, and in 2023, the state government officially handed the tender to the conglomerate. The NMDPL has been given a seven-year timeline to complete the rehabilitation, and that ends in 2032.
NMDPL did not respond to ThePrint’s email for a comment.
Preparations
According to state government data, Dharavi spans 259 hectares, of which 173.9 hectares are designated for redevelopment. Currently, 147.4 hectares are estimated to be occupied by slums.
The DRP Tuesday published a notice in newspapers requesting residents of Sector 6—specifically from the slums of Ganesh Nagar-Meghwadi, SVP Nagar, Azad Nagar, and Kamla Raman Nagar—to come forward and cooperate in signing rental agreements.
The DRP has set up a facilitation centre for slum dwellers at the Matunga Labour Camp in Dharavi.
The official said the DRP had completed the eligibility survey to determine which residents qualified for free in-situ housing. Project norms stated that residents of hutments existing on or before 1 January, 2000, would be rehabilitated into free 350-square-foot houses within Dharavi itself.
Meanwhile, residents in structures built between 1 January, 2000, and extending up to 1 January 2011 would be provided houses for Rs 2.5 lakh outside Dharavi but within the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) scheme. They will also be offered rental housing options.
The DRP has still not wrapped up the survey for the entire slum sprawl.
As of last month, out of more than one lakh tenements that needed to be surveyed across Dharavi, only 91,000 had cooperated, while the rest—13,000 to 20,000—had not even allowed the DRP officials to number their houses for the survey.
Of the 91,000-odd hutments that cooperated, 24,000 failed to furnish all the required documents.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)