New draft housing policy: Maharashtra appoints panel to suggest revamp solutions

Two months after the state government announced a new draft housing policy focussing on repairing and revamping old buildings in the suburbs, the government has now formed a committee of legislators to study the condition of old buildings in the city and suburbs and suggest solutions in two months

Two months after the state government announced a new draft housing policy focussing on repairing and revamping old buildings in the suburbs, the government has now formed a committee of legislators to study the condition of old buildings in the city and suburbs and suggest solutions in two months.

In a high-profile event in September, the first major function ahead of the 2017 civic polls, CM Devendra Fadnavis, sharing the stage with Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray, promised a slew of incentives to redevelopment Mumbai’s old buildings, especially in suburbs.

Fadnavis spoke of extending the island city’s incentive policy for the revamp of old tenanted buildings to the suburbs, introducing a cluster redevelopment policy for the suburbs and raising the Floor Space Index for the redevelopment of old Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) buildings.

The state government has now appointed a panel of three legislators from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), two from the Shiv Sena and three from other parties — all with old, dilapidated buildings in their constituencies.

The panel has BJP’s Mangal Prabhat Lodha, Raj Purohit and Tamil Selvan, Shiv Sena’s Ajay Chaudhari and Sunil Shinde, Congress’ Amin Patel, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen’s Waris Pathan and Nationalist Congress Party’s (NCP) Rahul Narvekar.

“The committee is expected to study the current condition of old cessed and non-cessed buildings across the city, and suburbs, refugee buildings and structures built decades ago under the Bombay Improvement Trust and the Prime Minister’s Grant Programme, and then recommend solutions. The panel is also expected to suggest possible financing models for the repair and renewal of these buildings,” said a state government official.

The committee is also expected to suggest suitable incentives to involve tenants and owners of these buildings to speed up the redevelopment. The state government has given the panel two months to submit its report.

The newly-constituted panel has also been asked to suggest measures for the revamp of transit camps and prevent encroachment in these camps. During the September function, the CM had announced a policy to tackle such encroachments. Fadnavis had proposed a regularisation scheme for all illegal residents with a deposit of Rs50,000 and a monthly rent of Rs6,000, with a 10% increase every year, and a promise to accommodate them under its ambitious ‘housing for all’ mission to give them permanent houses.