Build transit camps for slumdwellers or rental housing in the suburbs and avail of a huge construction bonanza in the lucrative island city. This is what the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) has proposed in a move activists and NGOs described as an "FSI scam'' meant to favour some builders holding prime plots in the island city. A building industry source said this would further congest the island city with luxury towers and convert the suburbs into ghettos of transit accommodations for slum dwellers.
At the heart of the matter is the little-known DC rule 33 (14), which the SRA wants to amend.
Currently, only suburban builders can avail of its construction benefits. Now, the SRA wants to extend it to the island city, where property prices in some pockets are the highest in the country. The SRA's controversial proposal comes even as the new, corrected Development Control rules are set to be unveiled soon, As an example, a builder can build transit camps or rental accommodation in faraway Dahisar (where land prices are a fraction compared to the island city) and hand them over free of cost to the SRA. In return, the builder receives unusually high floor space index (FSI) on his plot, say, in a high-end locality like Nepean Sea Road. Under this scheme, the SRA has offered builders in the island city FSI 3 as compared to the base FSI 1.33 in this region. In the suburbs, it has fixed the FSI at 4 as against the base FSI of 1.FSI is the ratio which determines how much can be built on a plot.
But the Slum Authority claims its proposal also stipulates that builders pay a premium for this additional FSI."The premium amount collected under rehabilitation scheme shall be kept in a separate account to be utilized as shelter fund for the state,'' it said. Last month when SRA invited objections and suggestions from the public, the NGO Pragati Manch strongly protested. "The SRA in collusion with select builders lobby has worked out a legitimate land grabbing scheme under the guise of providing transit camps and affordable housing for the masses,'' it wrote in a letter to SRA chief Aseem Gupta.
"The logic of the proposed notification aiding affordable housingtransit camps sounds frivolous as the fact remains that private developers would encash their FSI bonanza only for luxury housing. It's an open and shut case that speedier or smoother implementation of slum policy has no practical correla tion to availability of transit camps. With slum dwellers being provided rental housing as per market rates currently , the rehabilitation process faces no road blocks on this front,'' it added.
Housing activist Chandrashekhar Prabhu said many builders in the suburbs took advantage by buying cheap land in distant suburbs for transit camps and used the additional FSI on prime plots in Bandra and Khar to build luxury towers. Two years ago, TOI had reported on how a builder constructed a 20-storey tower on a pocket-sized plot near Khar gymkhana by using this provision. The additional FSI allowed the developer a construction area of 60,000 sq ft on a 6,000 sq ft plot--ten times the plot area.
SOURCE: ETRealty.com
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