Crooked Mumbai builders have left 1.25 lakh families in lurch

Mumbai

According to an estimate, about 5,800 redevelopment projects in the city are at a standstill and hapless citizens have been left in the lurch by fly-by-night builders who abandoned the projects after promising new homes in place of what were residences for generations. Over 1.25 lakh families are believed to be affected because builders stopped paying rent and there is no chance of the projects being resurrected.

It is in this backdrop that the self-redevelopment movement took root. Housing activist Chandrashekhar Prabhu, who conceived the housing society self-redevelopment scheme and wrote the policy for the Mumbai District Central Cooperative Bank to fund such projects, said, “As many as 726 societies have already resolved to go by the no-builder scheme and are reaping rich dividends in the form of more area, better planning, better quality of construction, timely completion, more corpus, all without giving any irrevocable power of attorney to anybody. Members give consent to their society and get at least one more room than what builders offer.

Moreover, the corpus is at least double of what builders give. The benefits increase in Mhada colonies because FSI is much more.” Prabhu said loan repayment is through the sale of flats in a project’s free sale component. “There is a twoyear moratorium for smaller projects and three-year moratorium for larger projects.