Mumbai: Mhada to revamp 47-acre Patra Chawl

The state government has directed the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada) to redevelop the long-languishing 47-acre Patra Chawl, one of the mega slum revamp projects in Mumbai which has been mired with multiple controversies

The state government has directed the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada) to redevelop the long-languishing 47-acre Patra Chawl, one of the mega slum revamp projects in Mumbai which has been mired with multiple controversies.

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Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray has asked Mhada to work out a plan to ensure that the redevelopment takes place in a time-bound manner.

He directed Mhada to form a panel to work out modalities that will work on the project cost, the gains to be made by the housing body and also talk to various stakeholders to push forward this long-pending project.

Mhada will first allot bigger houses to 672 existing tenants and ensure the completion of 306 houses which the Mhada had already sold through its computerised lottery. In addition, Mhada will also pay rents to the existing tenants who have been deprived of the same for years.

The tenants who have been fighting for years finally heaved a sigh of relief. “The state government has finally done justice to our cause. We will finally get our legal house,” said Rajesh Dalvi, president, Patra Chawl Sangharsh Samiti. “This is finally the first time that Mhada will be paying rents to the tenants,” he added.

The redevelopment of Patrawala Chawl in Siddharth Nagar has been mired in controversy due to the builder’s failure to provide new houses to existing tenants, depriving Mhada of its share of flats and for not paying rent to tenants.

In 2007, Mhada allowed Guru Ashish to redevelop and rehabilitate 675 chawl tenants. However, Mhada received complaints that he had sold the project to HDIL. However, Guru Ashish denied these claims.

A 2018 report by the then housing secretary Sanjay Kumar found that an error in the calculation of Patra Chawl area caused losses to the tune of ₹474 crore.