The tale of Naik Bet island

The TDR for the 32-acre piece of land that is surrounded by the Mula-Mutha river from one side was submitted on June 15 and withdrawn on August 9

Naik Bet Island, located near Sangamwadi is now in focus as Sportive Financial Service Private Limited, owned by Pune businessman Atul Chordia withdrew the proposal for getting ₹3,000 crore transferable development rights (TDR), barely two months after it was sought.

Naik Bet Island is located near Sangamwadi. (Shankar Narayan/HT PHOTO)

The TDR for the 32-acre piece of land that is surrounded by the Mula-Mutha river from one side was submitted on June 15 and withdrawn on August 9. However, there was no response from Chordia despite repeated phone calls.

Political discussions began to stir up last week as Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Sharad Pawar and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar conducted a meeting at Chordia’s Koregaon Park residence, despite the split in the party. Maharashtra NCP unit chief Jayant Patil was also present.

PMC city engineer PMC Prashant Waghmare said, “No TDR will be issues as the proposal has been withdrawn. This is not the first time that a TDR proposal has been withdrawn by any private party.”

According to police officials, Naik Bet is a private land, which was previously used for agriculture purposes. In the 2013 Development Plan (DP), a garden was proposed on the land. This further prohibited any possibility of real estate development on the land parcel. The land parcel was already seen as a difficult space to be developed due to its proximity to the Mula-Mutha river.

The PMC had prepared the draft of the Development Plan (DP), although the controversy surrounding the entire exercise pushed the then chief minister Devendra Fadnavis to transfer the entire process to the state government.

After the state government prepared the plan, land was reserved for a garden.

According to real estate experts, if the civic body issued the TDR for this land, the TDR market in Pune would tumble and would affect the real estate sector in the city.

A PMC official requesting anonymity said, “Why has the PMC proposed a garden reservation is also the question. There is no need to acquire this land as there is no approach road. During rains and floods, some part of this land gets submerged. The burden will be on the civic body.”