Maharashtra UDD issues changes in DCR to facilitate development projects

MUMBAI: Urban Development Department of the Government of Maharashtra issued changes to its Building Regulations/ Development Control Regulation (DCR) on June 25. It has decoupled current land development from the mill from new land development projects.

The government first unlocked mill lands for development in 1991 with the promise that two-thirds of the land mass would be used to create social housing and open spaces. For every corporate office, luxury apartments, and malls on such lands, the mill developers had to give a third of the space to the city as public open space, while simultaneously leaving additional one-third space for housing of mill workers and construction of transit shelters for the project-affected people.

The reason being that all these lands had been leased to mill owners a century ago at rates as low as one rupee. If the land had now turned into a prime real estate, the industry had shut down; there remained no justification of the appropriation of the real estate value by mill owners alone. However, most private mill owners ended up exploiting a “contentious” amendment introduced in 2001 in the regulations, which stated that only vacant or open land inside such mill lands was to be considered while working out the public open spaces and the mill workers’ housing component. This amendment was reversed by Davendra Fadnavis, former Chief Minister of Maharashtra, but the redevelopment projects suffered still. The UDD is now hoping to facilitate work on such projects with this segregation order.