MHADA’s "golden" offer to its tenants

The second such interaction took place at Griha Nirman Bhavan Bandra on Monday where senior MHADA officials held talks with representatives of 27 housing societies from Goregaon. This meeting where officials of all concerned departments will be present to answer tenants’ queries was part of an old programme.

In 1984, as part of a major exercise to cut down its establishment costs MHADA decided to hand over its tenements along with all the liabilities to the tenants who would be able to form their private housingsocieties. Following a lukewarm response, in 1994 the Authority had opened a special `Conveyance Cell’ to expedite the transfer process. However, MHADA officials admitted that a lack of coordination between its concerned departments in clearing papers slowed down the implementation of the programme. Explaining why MHADA was handing over the buildings to the tenants, Atul Hule, Executive Engineer and Secretary of the Mumbai Housing Board told Express Newsline, “Earlier, MHADA used to let out houses on rental basis. The tenants were then allowed to become owners by paying the cost in installments. MHADA used to charge one per cent of the house rent as maintenance fees, but with rent as low as Rs 100 in many cases, there never was sufficient money for carrying out maintenance and repair work.”

Since 1982, MHADA had stopped constructing flats to be given on rental basis. In 1985 it stopped carrying out repairs and maintenance work in its housing societies, said officials. This resulted in buildingsaging fast and some even showed signs of imminent collapse.

Till April 30, 1998, MHADA handed over 1309 buildings to individual cooperative housing societies which were registered under the Cooperative Societies Act.

Meanwhile, at Monday’s meeting, representatives of 45 MHADA housing societies were invited from Shashtri Nagar, Sidharth Nagar and Mitha Nagar (all in Goregaon). Most welcomed the idea of such meetings and hoped that the formalities would be hastened now.

President of one such society remarked that they were not against the conveyance deal. “However, we want the entire area in which the building is handed over to the society, and not just the 15 feet in front as announced by MHADA,” he said. Tenants fear that MHADA or the BMC may use the excess land for commercial purposes thus minimising their chances of benefiting from any extra floor space index (FSI).The meeting also highlighted the problems of transfer of property. In many cases, original tenants have sold their flats at theprevalent market rates without transferring the property in their name. Further, the surrounding land had been encroached upon at a middle income group (MIG) colony in Sidharth Nagar, said a resident.

B M Mane, who resides at old Shashtri Nagar for over 25 years said that his building has cracked walls, a leaking terrace, faulty drainage system besides weak beams and peeling plaster. He added that about 10 buildings in that area were in a dangerous condition and may collapse during the monsoon. But MHADA officials present at the meeting made it clear that they would not undertake any repairs before handing over the buildings to the societies.