Maitri housing society in Mumbai. (Express photo)More trouble is in store for the controversial Maitri housing society whose members are bureaucrats, police officers and senior government officials.
On Thursday, members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the state Legislature, while slamming the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) for irregularities in the construction of the high-rise, backed the state housing department’s proposal for cancellation of the allotment made to the society.
Maitri stands on a prime state-owned plot near the Grand Hyatt hotel in Kalina that had been originally offered by the government to Pakistani officials for their consulate.
On August 31, 2009, also the day when the model code of conduct had kicked in for the Assembly polls that year, then Congress-led government had first approved the proposal to offer 84 homes on ownership to the society.
While approving the contentious proposal, it had also approved memberships of the 84 beneficiaries, including senior IAS officers like Deepak Kapoor, Pravin Darade, Kshtrapati Shivaji, Bipin Shrimali, Ashish Sharma, Chandrakant Pulkundwar, and senior IPS officers such as Ashutosh Dumbre, Sukhwinder Singh and Sanjay Darade, among others. MHADA was directed to build these homes.
However, controversies over the irregularities in the construction have dogged the project since the very beginning. While the MHADA has so far constructed three 12-storied buildings at the plot, it has been found that the building contractor had violated Mumbai’s development control regulations and utilised more buildable area than was permitted. While MHADA norms cap the apartment size for all high-income segment categories to 1,076 sq ft, government’s own investigation has revealed that each of the apartment in the society has a floor area of more than 1,300 sq ft.
In 2017, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India had raised audit objections, coming down heavily on the MHADA for “blatantly violating the approved plans and awarding/executing a work beyond the scope of the permissible floor space index”. On Thursday, the PAC sought the government and MHADA’s reply on these audit objections.
The housing scheme was sanctioned under regulation 13(2) of the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development (Estate Management, Sale, Transfer, and Exchange of Tenements), Act, 1981, which permits the MHADA to build homes for a specific category of persons with the government’s prior sanction.
While MHADA officials said that the construction work could be legalised, housing department officials admitted that the sizes of the apartments were bigger than what is permitted.
In a meeting on Thursday, department officials informed the PAC members that a proposal for cancellation of the allotment to the society had been submitted to the Chief Minister’s Office. The PAC members agreed with the department’s proposal. They also backed the suggestion that the apartments could be auctioned under a public lottery process.
While MHADA claimed that the contractor had been penalised for the discrepancies, the PAC has sought a detailed note on the action taken, said sources. PAC members were also of the view of the non-constructed portion of the land should be used to build social housing for the weaker sections.
The MHADA had earlier written to the government seeking a review of memberships allotted in the society, citing a 2018 verdict of the Bombay High Court, which had ruled that an individual, even if he is a judge or a bureaucrat, should not get another flat if he already has one under a government scheme.
