Mumbai landowners up in arms against govt move to forcibly acquire properties

On August 28, the state Cabinet had cleared various modifications to the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Act, 1976, making time-bound redevelopment of dilapidated tenanted and non-tenanted buildings mandatory. The modifications will enable the state-run Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) to forcibly acquire properties in cases where the landholders or developers are found to have stalled redevelopments.

But even before the minutes of the Cabinet decision in this regard can be confirmed, the landowners have objected to it.

The protest is centred around a 23-year-old legal battle which is at present being heard by a nine-member bench of the Supreme Court. It turns out that in 1986, the state government had similarly amended the MHAD Act to introduce a new provision (Section 103B), allowing the Mumbai Building Repair and Reconstruction Board (MBRRB) of MHADA to acquire cessed properties with the consent of 70 per cent of the tenants for reconstruction purposes.

Challenging the move, the POA had first approached the Bombay High Court, and the later the SC, after losing the challenge in the lower court. In the SC, the matter was first referred to a three-member bench, but has since been referred to larger benches.

B R Bhattad, the POA president, said: “On May 1, 1996, a nine-member judicial bench (of the SC) had issued a stay order on acquisition of properties, which is still in force. The matter is sub-judice. If the government still goes ahead with the move, it would amount to the contempt of court. We will accordingly inform the court.”

As reported previously by The Indian Express, the state law department had, in an official communication, already anticipated a legal challenge to the move and cited the “restrictions imposed by the SC regarding the transfer of such properties”.

Bhattad argued that the landowner’s right to property was a fundamental right and it could not be suspended. According to the latest provision, landowners of buildings tagged unfit to live in will get six months to initiate redevelopment. The tenants’ collective will get another six months, if the former fails to do so, following which the MHADA’s board will forcibly acquire these properties. The government has also proposed to apply the provision to stalled cessed redevelopment projects.

With the MHADA reasoning that it won’t be able to pay 200 per cent of the plot’s market values as compensation, the government, meanwhile, is in the process of introducing state amendments to the Centre’s Land Acquisition Act to exempt the MHAD Act (1976) from its purview.

Bhattad alleged that the entire controversy was aimed at acquiring land at throwaway prices from landowners, and then parcel it out to big developers and contractors. “Instead of simplifying the redevelopment regulations and expedite the approval process for redevelopment with the active participation of the owners, the government appears bent on create fresh obstacles to their revamp,” he said.

“In the last four decades, the MBRRB has reconstructed just 442 old and dilapidated buildings. Landowners, on the other hand, have either redeveloped or initiated redevelopment of 5,000-odd buildings,” he added.

Meanwhile, in a reach out to the landowners, the government has said that it was willing to withdraw ongoing acquisitions undertaken under the previous clause.

A senior MHADA official said that 176 plots were at various stages of acquisition, when the court had stayed the proceedings. “If the owners and the tenants collectively come forward, we will withdraw such acquisitions. Since there is no law at present to relinquish properties where acquisitions have been carried out, a Cabinet nod will be sought.”