Free Housing in Mill Land Deferred

“As per the survey reports there are over one lakh mill workers those are eligible for free housing, so it would be impossible to accommodate all mill workers, but state could provide only 30,000 at the most” CM, whereas supreme court has ordered to allot free housing to mill workers."

The Municipal Commissioner Subodh Kumar has introduced the several new guidelines such as 100 percent premium on extra FSI, restrictions over residential and commercial constructions and many more norms has been implemented. According to Kumar these new proposed guidelines has been introduced to control the violations in constructions. In the aftermath of civic body’s tightened grip over the real estate sector builders have increased the property rates and between this tug of war common has grilled.

After these moves now civic body turned to mill lands, whereas mill land is not a new issue but still state government is tightening its grip over Mill land owners. As per the new imposed laws to deter the development permissions, for those developers who yet haven’t handed over the land which is suppose to allotted to the BMC and Mhada within the time frame of three months. According to the mentioned in DCR the allotted piece of land has divided into two parts from which Mhada is supposed to construct affordable houses for mill workers as well as economically weaker sections, whereas BMC is expected to use the part of allotted land for the purpose to upkeep the basic amenities.

Contrary to Supreme Court’s decision to provide free housing to mill workers on mill land, state government has denied to provide free housing to mill workers. While discussing with the Mill workers on Mill land issue, CM Prithviraj Chavan has said that “as per the survey reports there are over one lakh mill workers those are eligible for free housing, so it would be impossible to accommodate all mill workers but state could provide only 30,000 at the most. So at end of the meeting state government has cleared that “government will not allot these houses free of cost.”

However in 2001, the Vilasrao Deshmukh government, using a loophole in the Maharashtra Town and Planning Act, 1966, amended DCR 58 to DCR 58 (I), which stated: “Only land that is vacant on mill properties, that is, with no built-up structure, would be divided by the one-third formula.” This was a bonanza for mill owners who now had to part with only a minuscule percentage of the land. However, little activity was seen on the mill lands until 2003.

Apart from this if we observe this issue in the previous year state government had made promises that government will it provide free housing to mill workers. And percentage to be earmarked and handed over for development by MHADA for Public Housing / for mill worker’s housing as per guidelines approved by Government to be shared equally. So, “NTC has handed over about 1,70,000 sq ft of land to MHADA for mill workers’ housing that can be built for almost 2500 workers. Another 1,00,000 sq ft of land has been handed over by NTC to BMC for developing gardens and greener zones” for the betterment of the Mill workers living conditions. But all the promises are standstill there is no progress in those promises.