To Make Mumbai Slum-Free, Maharashtra Relaxes Norm

In a move that might help authorities reach slightly closer to making India’s financial capital slum-free, the Maharashtra government has decided to relax a condition under which only those dwellers who have built their huts before 2000 could be provided government-built tenements. Now, the state has decided to extend the benefits of the scheme those slum dwellers whose huts were built before January 2011. The relaxation would open the doors of better housing for about 3.5 lakh slum-dwellers who were not eligible so far.

However, the new beneficiaries ─ according to media reports around eight lakh people will benefit from the move ─ will have to pay a price for that.

Since the scheme is linked with the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, the government will provide a subsidy of Rs 2.5 lakh for each tenement, to be made available on in-situ basis or anywhere in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. This is the relief that the new beneficiaries get from the government as far as the overall construction cost goes.

Since the newly added beneficiaries will be paying part of the construction cost from their own pocket, no lock-in period has been cast up on them either. Under the Maharashtra Slum Areas Act, 1971, units allotted under the scheme cannot be sold, gifted, leased or exchanged for a period of 10 years.

“The scheme is contrary to the slum redevelopment scheme where the slum dwellers get a tenement for free,” Housing Department Additional Chief Secretary Sanjay Kumar was quoted by Hindustan Times as saying.

Some housing experts are of the view that in the absence of a lock-in period, dwellers might start selling or leasing the units to gain profits and shift to slums again. That, they say, would defeat the entire purpose of the scheme.