Six agencies tasked with land use planning in Mumbai

On the other hand, the MHADA will get unhindered powers to draw up land use and sanction building permissions and earn revenues from this, they added. Once the Fadnavis-led urban development department notifies the MHADA as the PA, sources said builders won’t need to approach the municipality for permissions in the zone.

The latest move comes at a time when Mumbai’s worsening urban gridlock has rekindled the demand that the entire city should be governed by a single agency and a single set of development control (DC) regulations. But since April 11, 2018, the state government has carved out new special planning zones from the city’s overall development plan, making the Mumbai Port Trust and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) as special planning authorities (SPA) for the new zones. It also cleared two proposals, making the MHADA the PA for lands that continue to reflect in the overall development plan.

According to a 2012 existing land use report for Mumbai, about 9 per cent of Mumbai’s landmass — 41.69 sq km out of 476.24 sq km — already existed as a special planning zone, which remained out of the ambit of the city’s overall development plan. But senior officials confirmed that such zones and the multiplicity of agencies have risen in the past year and a half.

On April 11, 2018, just before sanctioning the city’s new development project , the CM-urban development department had first carved out 960 hectare of prime land in South Mumbai, making the Mumbai Port Trust — which owns the largest bank of commercial exploitable land worth thousands of crores in the city — the SPA. Later, the MMRDA was accorded the same status for land acquired for various Metro carsheds, construction and routes.

In May that year, the MHADA was also nominated as the PA for 114-odd layouts (colonies) it owns in Mumbai.
While the housing agency had also pushed for an SPA tag for the 207 Bombay Development Directorate (BDD) chawls, spread over 37 hectares in central Mumbai, the government declined this proposal. Sources said that in this case, Fadnavis had been keen to avoid an altercation with ally Shiv Sena.

The new government decisions since last April means that land use planning in the city is now governed by six agencies — the Mumbai municipality, MMRDA, MHADA, MIDC, SRA and Mumbai Port Trust. Earlier, the civic body had written to the state government stating that for effective city planning, it was essential that SPAs be denotified and that the city is governed by the same set of regulations and a single agency. The state’s town planning department too holds the same viewpoint, said sources.

Meanwhile, following Wednesday’s decision, the municipality’s revenues from the construction sector are set to take a hit.

With more than 1,000 projects ongoing, premiums from the sale component of urban renewal schemes and individual redevelopment projects of cessed properties was a major source of revenue.

Earlier this month, the Fadnavis government’s move to slash construction premiums to ease the liquidity crunch faced by the construction sector hit the BMC’s revenue targets from the sector for 2019-20 by Rs 1,000 crore. The government, meanwhile, has argued that carving out special zones will expedite revamp and development in these regions.