Prove ownership: SRA to 12,500 tenants

Mumbai: After serving notices to 114 builders over the delay in construction of the Slum Rehabilitation Authority’s (SRA) projects, the authority has now served notices to around 12,500 tenants for selling, renting or gifting their tenements before 10 years from the date possession, which violates the provision of the Maharashtra Slum Areas (Improvement, Clearance And Redevelopment) Act, 1971.

The notices were served after conducting a survey for more than one year where the tenants are being informed that their possession is in violation of the section 3E, of the Maharashtra Slum Act. The tenants have been called for a hearing in order to give justification and submitting the required documents. After the hearing, if the competent authority (SRA) does not find any merit in the case, it will issue an eviction order for that particular property.

SRA chief executive officer (CEO) Vishwas Patil confirmed that around 12,500 tenants had been served notice asking and calling them for hearing. “We have served the notice and further action would be taken as per the provisions of the Slum Act,” Mr Patil said. In the past one year, SRA has been carrying out video-graphic survey of all the allotments it has made in the city since its inception in 1995. This was after the Bombay High Court via its November 4, 2015 had directed SRA to carry out the survey for the same in a phase wise manner and take action against the illegal transfers.

Satyanarayan Bajaj, deputy collector SRA, said, “The survey is ongoing and in the coming  days more notices are likely to be served. Also, simultaneously we will carry out hearing of those who have been served notices. In Malad and Goregaon area alone we have served notice to around 933 tenants.” When The Asian Age visited to one of the society in Goregaon, where a tenant named Vasant Ahire has been served notices, he said, “I am fully aware that my possession is illegal and I have brought four flats at a cost of Rs 20 lakh per unit. The people who want to reside in slums will stay in slums. The original

tenants have sold their flats to me and I have no fear of the authorities. I have already approached the court and get a stay order from there. Why should anyone have a problem when a buyer and seller don’t have a problem?”

The law of the land:
According to the Slum Act, a particular tenement cannot be transferred by the allotted thereof by way of sale, gift, exchange, lease or otherwise for a period of the first ten years commencing from the date of allotment of the tenement. The SRA scheme allows developers to allot homes measuring 269 square feet to eligible slum dwellers who have been living in that slum prior to January 2000. In return for allotting homes to slum dwellers, developers get additional floor space index (FSI) on the particular plot, where they can sell their additional constructions in the open market (sale component) after rehabilitating slum dwellers under the rehab component.