Mumbai Port Trust land to get ‘special zone’ tag

The Chief Minister-led Urban Development department has formulated a proposal to accord a “special planning zone” tag for these land, making MbPT its Special Planning Authority (SPA), informed senior sources.

The Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT), which owns the largest bank of commercially exploitable land bank worth thousands of crores in the country’s financial capital, will have its own development plan. The Chief Minister-led Urban Development department has formulated a proposal to accord a “special planning zone” tag for these land, making MbPT its Special Planning Authority (SPA), informed senior sources.

In other words, around 960 hectares of MbPT land, in the heart of Mumbai, will soon be carved out of Mumbai’s larger development plan. Mumbai’s development control regulations won’t be entirely applicable to these.

But the contentious proposal, if approved, would dent the Mumbai municipality’s ambitious low-cost housing plan. Targetting to build 10 lakh new ‘affordable’ homes within the next two decades, the civic body’s new development plan (DP 2034), which has been put up for the government’s sanction, had proposed unlocking of land parcels hitherto marked as no-development zones, salt pan lands, tourism development areas, and MbPT lands for building low-cost houses, which would be pooled together and auctioned by the civic body at prefixed rates.

To involve owners of such land in the initiative, the civic body had proposed handsome construction area benefits to participants. If a land owner constructed such affordable homes, public amenities, social amenities and institutional spaces on 66 per cent of the land and handed these over free of cost to the municipality, he would be entitled to exploit the remaining 44 per cent land commercially. A floor space index (ratio of built up area to plot area) equal to three times the plot size would be available for this remaining land.

About 140 hectare of MbPT land were to be released for low cost houses and open spaces under the model. But the MbPT, which has its own plan of developing the eastern water front, has other ideas. A land development committee, appointed by Union Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari, has recommended that the port activities be restricted to 40 per cent of the MbPT land, unlocking the remaining 60 per cent, about 576 hectares, for building commercial spaces, offices, gardens, parks and infrastructure.

The central agency wants the state to consider the rehabilitation of the existing slums and chawls on its land as its contribution towards the low-cost housing stock. Once the SPA status is accorded, the MbPT will be able to formulate its own plan and rules for the land it holds, confirmed officials.

The move also comes at a time when DP 2034 has made a case for the denotification of all such special planning zones within Mumbai. As per the existing land use plan, 2012, about 4,323 hectare or 9.43 per cent of Mumbai’s total area (45,829 hectare) has previously been notified as a special planning zone. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region continues to be SPA for Backbay Reclamation, Bandra Kurla Complex, and Wadala Truck Terminus and the Indu mill land. The Slum Rehabilitation Authority, on the other hand, has been appointed as the SPA for the Dharavi notified area, and the MIDC is incharge of industrial belts in Marol and Seepz in suburban Andheri. Two other special zones — the Oshiwara District Centre and the Gorai Manori Uttan Recreation and Tourism Development Zone — both of which were with the MMRDA have been recently denotified and are now part of the Mumbai municipality’s planning area.

Incidentally, state’s own housing board, the Maharashtra Housing And Area Development Authority, has also approached the government to grant it the “planning authority” status for the 56 colonies it owns across Mumbai. Despite the civic body’s objection, the government is favourable to Mhada’s proposal as well, confirmed sources.

In January this year, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had hinted at this arrangement. At a function for the laying of the foundation stone for construction of an international cruise terminal at the Indira Dock at Ballard Estate, Fadnavis had said that “an SPA status would ensure that the MbPT would not need to go around running for approval from state and civic authorities over its plan to develop the eastern waterfront in Mumbai.