Rehab in limbo, as MHADA postpones crucial meeting

The builders and developers of Mumbai would have to wait another week to know their fate about the status of redevelopment proposals that have been sent to the Mumbai board of Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority ( MHADA). For, the board meeting of the officials earlier scheduled for December 22 has now been rescheduled to December 30.

Though the prima- facie reason given for this postponement is the unavailability of key officials including the Chief Executive officer, there are other issues that may have led to the rescheduling of the meeting. As per MHADA sources, there have been conflict amongst the authority and officials over a resolution passed by the board in September. The resolution mentioned that MHADA would not be going for premium, but would be taking houses from the developers undertaking redevelopment on MHADA land.

The catch in the entire matter is, however, that the redevelopment proposals submitted to the board before September 20 ( the date resolution was implemented). The chairman of the board Amarjit Singh Manhas has mentioned that they would be taking the premium from the proposals applied before 20 September. Hence, there is clash among the authority members and the officials as the former have said that premium would be collected from the developers who have submitted their proposals before the resolution had been passed. The officials want to be uniform and collect housing stock from all the developers whose proposals would be cleared now or in the future. This decision was to be taken in the board meeting.

Earlier, Manhas had said, " We will see to it that housing stock is only collected from the developers who have applied after September 20." There are around 169 redevelopment proposals pending for approval with the board. To add to it, the current demolition drive at the Sardar Vallabhai Patel Nagar in Andheri (West) has seen around 45 of the 98 societies applying for redevelopment.

Generally a board meeting is held immediately after the assembly session is over but the absence of the CEO and internal management issues has led to this delay. Many other officials including the acting CEO Subhash Hazare is also on leave. However, according to MHADA sources the second schedule would also be missed, as many MHADA officials would be resuming services in 2011.

As per the MHADA's rules, one of the every three houses built under redevelopment would be given to MHADA, which can then plan to put them under its lottery scheme. However, the resolution has not gone down well with the developer community of the city. They feel that if they are forced to provide readymade houses to the MHADA instead of premium then they won't be able to provide high quality services as they won't be able to afford it.