A year on,panel raps Dharavi plan

“The project is being driven by personal greed rather than the welfare of residents of Dharavi,” it said. The committee also objected to the project on grounds of possible damage to the livelihood of local people as well as the burden it will add to an already-densely populated area.

The 10-member committee was constituted a year ago and it had written to the Chief Minister just last month expressing its reservations about project consultant Mukesh Mehta. This time,the committee has objected to the very basis of the project itself.

The letter has been signed by all members, including former Maharashtra chief secretary D M Sukthankar,MMRDA’s former chief planner Vidyadhar Phatak,structural engineer Shirish Patel,Raheja College of Architecture director Anirudh Paul,urban planners Arvind Adarkar and Neera Adarkar,among several others.

The committee has opposed the project in its present form,in which private builders rehabilitate the slumdwellers in return of being allowed to commercially exploit part of the land. It has instead recommended that the land occupied by the slumdwellers should be leased to them for 99 years while augmenting the infrastructure and providing them with proper sanitation,water supply and garbage disposal. The alternative approach to redevelopment,proposed by the committee,states that the residents should be encouraged to redevelop Dharavi in small clusters on their own in accordance with a government-approved master plan.

MHADA vice-president Gautam Chatterjee,in charge of the project,admitted that the committee has time and again raised issues regarding livelihood,pedestrian and vehicular traffic movement,adequate ventilation,survey and rights of those living on mezzanine floors. “These were valid issues and I believe these were addressed in the presentations made before them by developers. I am surprised that they are questioning the concept at this juncture.”

He said the existing slum rehabilitation scheme as well as the redevelopment of cessed buildings allowed for a floor space index of four to even ten. “For the Dharavi Redevelopment Plan,in fact the FSI has been limited to four. On what basis are they saying that our cross-subsidisation model is not sustainable?”